The Silver Wolf
by HeliosNerd
Summary: After discovering a dark secret in the shape of a female werewolf, Priam the woodsman has been ensnared in a mysterious struggle that forces him to face both internal trials and growing physical danger. Politics and magic challenge his identity but wolves and rebels threaten the lives of him and his newfound companion.
1. Lamentation of the Fallen

He listened to the song of the wolves every night, allowed its wild, tuneless melody to enter his body, his mind. It made him feel complete, one with the savage side of the world but also one with its majesty. He never pretended that he could sing along, but his soul surely did. It was all well and good, to feel an imaginary connection to the very beasts that threatened his life every time he stepped into the woods to hunt and sustain what meager existence he had carved out in the heart of the wilderness. They had attacked, he had defended, but still he heard them by night and he felt as if they called to him.

He heard them lamenting one night. It was sad and sweet but full of mourning, tragedy, as if they beckoned the moon to them and it merely sank behind a ridge of stony clouds and hid, and refused them. But then they were broken off, and there were sharp yelps, and the chorus was replaced by a single, broken soloist. She sung of battle wounds—he was certain it was a she—and of a disgraced death upon foreign soil. Suddenly he was subject to the pull of her dying requiem and he dove into the woods in search of her. Perhaps she had come from a rival pack, and provoked those that he lived alongside, or perhaps she had broken a sacred code of wolves. He found her lying in a puddle of blood and moonlight, her dashing quicksilver coat stained and matted with splotches of deep maroon. She was unattended, and so he scooped her up and brought her back to his cabin.

There was not much space, but he tucked the creature amongst his blankets and bound her wounds, uncertain of why he felt so compelled to save her. It was some wolf bitch, after all, and would tear out his throat if she recovered, but at the very least her song need not be depressed any longer.

He slept the night in a chair, lulled by the pale whimpers of the moonlit wolf, dreaming of her sprinting at deadly speed through the forest, leaping effortlessly over creeks, narrowly avoiding the obstacles the trees attempted to lay in her path. When he woke, his first thoughts were of her, and when he dared to check, she was there but had changed. She had shed the gleaming silver pelt and donned the soft rosy flesh of a maiden rising from steaming water, and her hair was long and unkempt but wild and beautiful nonetheless. He reached to touch her, almost certain the wolf would reappear, but it did not and he placed a hand on her feverish back instead. Under his calloused hands was skin spun from the looms of the gods; she was flawless from head to toe, and naked as the day she was born. It was intoxicating. He had never seen a woman so naked, so close.

"You saved me," she breathed, her lips ghosting the words and her eyes remaining closed as if in gentle sleep. "Your name...?"

"Priam," he replied, too dumbfounded to question how she had entered. He retracted his hand so that she would not think him perverted. "Are-are you-"

"A werewolf?" Her laughter, the softest dripping of dew into a puddle, made his heart skip a beat. "I am. Your pack... defended you from me. But you came anyway..."

"You were hurt."

"And you risked a wolf in your home?" She had blue eyes, strikingly so, bluer than the lake reflecting the sky, a deep cerulean though, and they were kind. He realized she had opened them and was staring into his. "I admire that."

He had no answer, but his fickle woodsman heart, an organ so little used he almost had expected it to have died years prior, kept him rooted to her bedside. She smiled, returning to her dreamlike state with eyes gently closed.

"My name is Lucina," she continued softly, "and I am indebted to you, Priam..."


	2. Sick Little Pup

Of course she was in no hurry to leave, with those deadly injuries to her ankles, collar, shoulders. Even as a human they seemed to burden her movements as if they were scarlet shackles, and the boiling blood in her veins seemed to be doing little to aid. He was afraid to ask if her blood ran as hot as a wolf's, but he had to know if she needed to be treated for a fever. Her brief moment of talking to him had ended when she drifted back into sleep, snuggling into his musty pillow as if it were the finery of a queen's bed but he could not pry his eyes away from her body. It was not just a naked woman, it was a living, breathing creature, something vulnerable and perhaps dying by the moment. Her flesh may be hot to the touch, but she breathed the cold frost of the reaper and he was not about to let her expire in his home, not while he had the strength and determination to see her through such grievous injuries. While she rested—fitfully, he noticed, as she seemed to whimper and woof softly—he made several trips to the stream to stockpile water for her, and he brought clean rags to her bedside so that he could clean her wounds again if needed, and any bandaging supply he may have stashed for emergencies was brought to a more accessible location on the top of his little table. Almost terrified of offending her, he also pulled a quilt over her nude back so that all he could see was her rich mane of midnight locks and the slim, petit face that nestled somewhere within it. He hid the wolf pelts as well, though he wondered to himself if she despised the beasts or loved them.

Her identity struck him as odd, as well. For a werewolf, she did not seem to have possessed the hulking beast form, the hunched back and barely humanoid arms, the ability to walk upright but the necessity to chase prey and howl with the wolves. He had found her as a wolf, a creature identical to those that prowled his woods, and yet she had called them his "pack" and claimed that they had attacked her. She was an intruder, she was not an equal or an alpha. Her beast blood worried him, especially when night fell again and he was susceptible to her animal form. Or would she transform at all? He would have to wait and see, and in the meantime begin his own hunt so that he had plenty of meat on hand to sate her no-doubt voracious appetite.

Before he could stand to leave for perhaps the rest of the day, he knelt beside her and murmured almost hopefully, "I need to hunt, but I've left water in the buckets. They're at the foot of the bed, if you get thirsty. I should be back before dark."

She slept on, though he saw her eyelashes twitch and he took that to be a response. He left her then and entered the woods, armed with just a dagger because all he planned to do was check his traps and carry home whatever he found. He had some cured meat stored away that he could break into if he returned empty-handed, but that was not the case today. Perhaps the struggle of the wolves the night before had scared wildlife directly to his snares, for he returned to the cabin with six rabbits slung over his shoulder and a fox in his other hand. That would last them a few meals, he assumed, though he still had not gauged whether or not the woman would be able to eat like a man or a beast, or if she had the strength to eat at all. When he opened his door-slowly, so that he would not scare his guest-he found her sitting up, leaning forward as if she could detect the scent of fresh prey. There was fatigue in her eyes, and weakness in her posture, but he was glad to see that at the very least she seemed to be capable of moving.

"What did you bring?" she asked curiously, the lilt of her voice almost intoxicating as well as savage. Her words sounded as if they had come from the tongue of the wolf and not the woman, as if it had been the deadly blood of the beast to stir at his arrival.

"Just something to eat. Hungry?" Modestly and more than a little nervously, he averted his gaze from her and focused solely on laying his catch out on the table, inspecting it, hoping that it met her standards, whatever they might be.

"Starving." She pushed herself up entirely, his quilt sliding away as she peered across the room to admire the creatures he had captured. "You will feed me, too?"

"I'm not letting you leave until you are healed. Food is part of healing." He glanced back and noted that in his absence she had torn at the bandages on her ankles and the wounds were more terrible in the light of evening. "But you will get nothing until you redress that wound."

"Hm?" Confusion in her eyes, she examined the bloody gashes across her calves and shook her head. "I don't like them there. Look, I left all the others."

"I can see that," he muttered, dragging a chair closer to the bed, then bringing a bucket and a rag in front of it so that he could sit before her and perhaps aid her with cleaning up. "These wounds won't heal, and then you won't be able to walk. Is that what you want?"

"No." She offered her foot like a trained lion, tentatively and as if he had a blade at her throat and would slice if she did not comply, and in the back of his mind he questioned if she was perhaps some backwards creature that was truly wolf and thus not accustomed to a pelt of flesh nor a life of bandaging and wooden walls.

He unwound the soiled wrappings, marveling at the vermillion dried into them and also the tooth marks that seemed to have obliterated them. He tossed them aside for the time being and set about washing away congealing blood, praying that his insensitive fingers did not cause her further pain. "Good. If you let the bandages stay a few days, you will be well enough to go outside."

Sitting there in the cabin built for one, washing the foot of a woman wolf who had been mauled by her own kind, forcing himself not to gawk at her magnificent body-which he realized was muscular as well as flawless, it was not an event he ever considered partaking in, but there he sat. He could hear her shallow, uncertain breath echoing off the too-close walls, and he saw her fingers twitching and grabbing at nothing as she fought off either obscure, terrifying memories or instinctual discomfort. Somehow she was so strong, able to allow this stranger's care, yet at the same time she was so horrifyingly weak that he knew if she attempted to retract her foot and tuck herself away in his quilt that he could overpower her with a word. Blood flowed lazily in her veins, boiling but languid, carrying all manner of emotion from her head to her heart and back. Her eyes betrayed it all; they began to look like the stream as she wept silently for her own pitiful behavior, and suddenly he pulled his hand away from her foot to see that her wounds were, once more, bleeding and raw. Had he dug into them and done this to her? He could not remember. But he was still calm, as tranquil as an ancient maple rooted firmly to the earth and to his own life, and he began to wrap bandages around the scarlet mess so that the poor little pup quivering before him would be able to run again. She was so small, so youthful and so absolutely argent. He had to protect something so precious, nurse it until it could stand proud on its own.

"Lucina," he said as her named reappeared in his mind, "are you thirsty?"

"Just a bit," she whimpered, shivering all over now and hiding her tears beneath her unkempt bangs.

"Drink, then." He released her foot and located a suitable cup, which he handed to her so that she would feel more empowered while he retrieved another bucket of fresh, clean, clear water. He helped her dip and fill the cup, then bring it to her lips, and when she nearly dropped it he was there to catch it and refill it for her. A little water on the floor did not bother him, but the droplet streaming from the corner of her mouth did, and he caught that as well, with only one finger.

"It hurts," she murmured, rolling her ankle for him to see.

"It will now, but you will heal, pup."


	3. Nocturnal Metamorphosis

Night fell languidly, drowsily, dragging its arcane black cloak across the sky with little enthusiasm, as if the moon could not be woken and the sun must linger a moment longer to account for its absence. It seemed that a dying light filled the cabin for hours past when Priam anticipated nightfall, and he could not be certain whether this delay was due to the same magical properties of the woman in his company or his subtle anxiety at her identity come nightfall. When at last the final bits of sunlight flickered out, extinguished by the lake, he turned to observe Lucina's reaction to the rise of an uncomfortably large moon. Bathed once more in the pale, cool fingers of night, she seemed to be growing restless, and he moved his chair to the far corner of the room so that, should she find herself subjected to whatever hex pumped through her veins, he would not be caught in the crossfire. She was alert, and if she had the wolf ears they would be perked up curiously towards the window, from which the richness of the darkness attempted to penetrate her peculiar ability to attract beams of moonlight. With that slim amount of light he was able to detect a sheen of sweat across her naked flesh. Her blood must be in a rage, more steam than fluid as it pounded furiously against her skin. The poor girl seemed on edge, listening for something that had not yet hit his ears, and suddenly she began to tremble as she pushed up to rest on all fours.

He sat up a little straighter. "Lucina...?"

"I..." She shuddered, her powerful muscles rippling beneath nude flesh. He could already detect a puddle spreading beneath her, and the ripened odor of salt and bodies. "I need to go outside..."

"I won't allow it. You will hurt yourself in your condition."

Growling suddenly, clutching the blankets below her, she snarled at him, "You will get hurt."

"I can take it, whatever may happen." They were brave words, and he said them as confidently as a woodsman whose greatest enemy was the forest itself, but in a moment he regretted such a casual sentence. She was quivering harder and her muscles were twitching spastically, now, so much so that she nearly collapsed face first, but she held herself up long enough to scream humanly and then she was lost. Her very bones were burning now, and her screams were inhuman and closer to howls, guttural and nonsensical and, above all, tormented. Deep within morphing vocal cords was a powerful note so beautiful, so wild and liberated but at the same time so repressed and tragic, more dismal than a fallen tree still smoking from a fire, more downcast than a thunderstorm with no lightning. As her body warped and morphed, her lungs seemed to be crushed beneath her ribs and he almost ran to help but there was nothing within his power that would sooth her anguish. She existed now somewhere between his knowledge, too animalistic to be reasoned with but too human to be calmed by slow movements and gentle words.

He forced himself to relax. He was of no use to her if he, too, was panicked and beyond consolation. Her body was now beyond his recognition as anything natural, but he marveled at the magic behind her condition. Somewhere in the world someone had hated her enough to damage her in such a way, and now she seemed doomed to suffer until her terrifying transformation snapped her spine beyond the aid of her boiling blood and she collapsed under the weight of her own existence.

In every way it expressed ultimate cowardice, but he turned away. Perhaps it was because he felt invasive for observing her transformation, or perhaps it was true fear, but he found himself unable to witness anything for another moment. He only tilted his head up to see once the noise had ceased and he was certain there would be a sleeping woman. He met those bright eyes, filled with such depth that he felt himself sinking into them, but they were set in the skull of the moonlit wolf.

"Lucina?" he murmured vaguely, words now sounding strange even on his perfectly human tongue. The wolf blinked at him and tilted her head, a bit wary but also curious and innocent. She seemed to recognize her name, though, and suddenly she leapt off the bed and staggered towards him. He had dealt with wolves in the woods before, and knew that they would not attack until they detected a smart opening, but this was different than entering the territory of his hostile pack. She approached with a calm demeanor, sniffed at him, and then stepped back and tilted her head the opposite direction. He lowered his guard and so did she. "I brought you here to heal. Do you remember me? I suppose we only spoke briefly."

She woofed slightly and suddenly sneezed, and with that lost interest in him. Instead, she sniffed around the cabin and lapped eagerly at the water he had stashed, then dug for a moment at the section of the floor that was cut out to be the door of a cellar. He allowed this with awe, grateful that the beast seemed to have deemed him worthy, but also he began to worry that she may destroy his supplies and he would watch powerlessly. She, however, was too hindered by bandages on her vital joints to do very much destruction, and after just a few moments of searching she collapsed by his bed and sighed deeply.

"If I sleep, too, will you promise not to eat me?" he asked jokingly but softly. She huffed and glared at him with a personality that was more than any animal he had ever seen, but it merely made him chuckle. "I suppose if you kill me in the night, at least I will be able to sleep for eternity."

He watched her face carefully for what seemed like hours, and yet he was never quite able to tell: had she smiled at his teasing?


	4. Foolish Curiosity

Fitfully, as if someone had been twisting the hair on the back of his neck, Priam clung to whatever heartbeats of sleep he managed to catch, and finally he seemed incapable of even shutting his eyes. He felt his blood stirring almost as feverishly as the cursed blood of his guest. As she slept on, he crept past and slid outside into the chilly night air. How beautiful it was, how silent, even the wolves were peaceful with a sliver shaved off the moon. Perhaps they were as worried as he, as pensive and cautious, but also as curious. It was not every day that a wolf, torn apart by territorial assailants, turned into a maiden. He could not be certain if he had not finally be driven insane by isolation and endless fields of sentinel trees, for the situation was certainly impossible, but perhaps it truly was an act of mysterious hexes and unfortunate damsels.

He could see it when he shut his eyes tightly. In the tallest tower of a quaint castle rested the bed of the young lady, soft silken sheets caressing her angelic skin, and every morning she would rise to greet the day with soft but exciting words. The people of the tiny town below would greet her casually as she graced their streets, and her lordly parents would shower her with gifts of all kind so that one seemingly mundane day she would take a finely bred mare into the woods in search of adventure. The baker would wave as she galloped past, then the blacksmith, then the innkeeper, and none would worry that their beloved princess would encounter any trouble, as the loyal guards patrolled day and night. If a beast happened to catch her, the horse she rode could outpace any creature, and there was a woodsman that would leap to her aid should the need arise. Her safety was assured, but the one factor that could not be controlled by preventative measures was her own curiosity. She met a sorceress who promised her swift feet and boundless freedom, not to mention a silver coat to protect her once she abandoned the protected portion of the forest. The price was, simply, her nights, as she would now use them to explore, and the ignorant maid accepted without hesitation. Then she rode her horse home that night and attempted to tuck herself into her sheets, to lose herself to dreamland adrift on a tide of perfumed silks, to await the promised powers of the witch.

However, when the poor woman awoke, it was in pain and with her body morphing. She stumbled from the castle and into the woods, and a few night owls peered out of their homes and wondered who that wretched creature had been. She finished the gruesome change in the woods, then wandered them hopelessly for the rest of the night. Daybreak brought her back to her human form, but she found no relief, and she must have spent weeks simply wandering until she stumbled into the realm of the woodsman.

In such a story he would be the hero, but in this little cabin there was no such thing.

He cleared his whirling dream thoughts with a quick shake of his head, and then he watched her shiver for a moment. Sometime in the early moments of dawn she had transformed again, and yet she was still curled up on the ground, bandages loose once more.

"Where did you come from?" he murmured, and suddenly she twitched and lifted her head to smile at him.

"I could ask the same of you."

"Fair enough. My father brought me out here when I was young, and he taught me everything I needed to survive. When he died, I taught myself everything else."

Lucina tilted her head to one side, wolfishly. "What about your mother?"

"She died before I could have something of her to remember."

"Surely you do not spend your life out here."

"I do, though I have been to town on occasion to buy and sell a few things." He rested his elbows on his knees and regarded her with a practiced hunter's eye. "Now, you?"

"I was starving on the streets, desperate for any means to earn money or a meal. The witch said she would give me silver, and instead I received a curse."

He pondered for a moment, then shook his head. "You lie."

"It is as if you already know me," she chuckled faintly, resting her head on the unforgiving floor once again and beginning to drift off. "I will... tell you the truth... after breakfast."


	5. Becoming Alpha

"You owe me a story," he instructed flatly, withholding the plate while Lucina stared hungrily up at it. "I'll give this to you when you tell me where you came from."

She was still clearly exhausted and a bit wolfish, especially in her abyssal blue eyes, and he could hear a soft whine from the back of her throat, but he held firm. One should not reward a dog for its hunger alone. When she swiped up at him, he pulled back the plate so that its tantalizing aroma hit his nostrils instead, the mesmerizing scent of freshly cooked meat making his head swim just as much as hers, and she whined audibly for a moment before sitting up like a regular person. "I... I said after breakfast."

"After breakfast, I will not have anything to barter with," he explained, lowering the food once more to tempt her. "I just want to know where you come from, not your entire story. Is that too much to ask?"

"I suppose not. Very well, then. My father is a nobleman, and I lived in... I never knew the name. Home, I suppose. It was a small town next to a small castle." She held out her hands, such tiny little paws with pretty pink nails, and to reward her good behavior he placed the plate on them. The pile of fresh rabbit steaks impressed her immensely, and she chewed gently on them like a pup before setting the plate down in her lap and attempting to eat like a human.

"Not a wolf turned person, then?"

She shook her head and from then ignored him, giving him plenty of time to observe and marvel at her. Such a fragile creature, a young orchid instead of a beastly canine, definitely old enough to have already blossomed and wilted into maturity but still youthful and free. With each bite she regained another shred of her humanity, and by the end of her meal she was adjusted completely to this inconspicuous skin. Briefly he considered just how animalistic she could become while still garbed as one of his kin, but the thought was dark and he chose to shove it into the corner of his mind, to be revisited in the isolation of the woods. He changed her bandages, pleased with the progress of her wounds, and when his work was complete she was still wide awake and seemed to be anticipating something from him.

"If you would like, I could help you outside to rest in the sun," he offered as he strapped a knife on his belt and an ax on his back. "I will stay where I can hear you, and you can call if you encounter trouble."

Absolutely brimming with eagerness, she nodded and grinned and attempted to stand with her own power, but he caught her quickly and held her up clumsily from under her arms. He had little desire to lay his hands all over her injured flesh, but she needed to be supported through the door and into the soft grass, and she giggled softly when finally he helped her sit. For a naked, lost, injured woman, she had a boundless spirit.

He left her there, and entered his sanctuary of sentinel trees to escape the undeniable stirrings to stick to his patient's side. It was something of protection, but deeper and wilder and stuck prominently in the back of his mind at all times like pitch on his shoes. Never before had he known such instinctual yet human emotions for another creature of his species, especially not a complete stranger. He evaded them in the marketplace, afraid to discuss any more than strict business. People were poachers. He had lived amongst the animals long enough to know. They were greedy and dependent and thrived only on the power of a select few. Where there was a threat, they erected their stone walls and cowered behind them, thinking themselves better of the rabbits that slipped silently beneath the earth, but one such as Priam-who knew the patterns and behaviors of a rabbit and a man based solely on their footprints-could see through their ruse. But this Lucina, this woman's skin cloaking a wolf's soul, she was different. She needed him and knew it, and did not pretend to be above his help while at the same time longing for her independence. Perhaps it had something to do with her curse, her blood; whatever she may have been, she saw the world as a beast now, as he did. They were alike. Perhaps she truly was one of his own.

"Priam!" Her scream ripped through the woods like a rusty dagger through soft flesh, and he forgot all his woodsman manners and tore through the woods as if he had never walked them before. When he arrived back home, she was crouched on her toes and her fingertips, face to face with the largest wolf he had ever seen. The beast snarled and snapped its bone-crushing jaws just in front of her nose, and her wide, fearful eyes did little to aid her image in the eyes of the animal. The bushes held two more impressively built wolves, but they seemed content to watch this alpha destroy the intruder.

He had nothing but a sharp, unexplained sensation to wrestle the beast to the ground and tear its ears off with his teeth to teach it a lesson, and he acted upon it. For all its strength, the wolf could not simply deflect the full force of a grown behemoth of a man, and the two were tangled on the ground for several murderous heartbeats, snarling and clawing and attempting to keep themselves from harm while refusing to throw the match. Priam could keep the beast pinned under his body but he could not simply wait for the wolf to grow tired of chewing on his arms, which had become bloody in the brawl, so at last he wrapped his arms around the creature's chest and hurled it with all his might back towards the woods. It yelped as it landed, and lay still for a few moments before whimpering and dragging itself into the cover of the brush once more, its companions howling a prayer for their defeated leader.

With the scuffle over and his guest saved, Priam returned his attention to Lucina and inspected her for injury, but she stood before he could kneel and grabbed his wrists. "You... You're hurt." Darting over the ragged holes in his forearms, her eyes suddenly watered and she collapsed against his chest. "You fought a wolf for me. Why?"

"I want you to be healed. You cannot be healed if you are in danger." He merely stood, confused at why it had been so easy to throw himself at a wolf but so challenging to decide what to say to this little pup. "We should go inside now. Are you hurt?"

She shook her head and gripped his shoulders as tight as her shaking hands could bear. "I will tend to your wounds. I want you to be healthy, too."

As he aided her back inside, slowly and deliberately placing each foot so that they would find sturdy ground, he noticed that the two concealed wolves had begun to creep out of their sanctuary, and were staring up at him with ears pinned to their heads and bellies dragging on the ground.


	6. Mysterious and Ulterior Motives

Thankfully, and for which he was suddenly grateful to the gods he had never once bothered to appease, she was unharmed and only mildly shaken by the encounter. Those aggressive wolves must have tracked her through the woods, perhaps even scouted his little homestead to see when the intruder would appear once more and be at their mercy. It struck him as odd that the former alpha had not thought to attack her between the time of encounter and the moment Priam arrived, but whatever held him back did not concern Priam in the slightest. It was for the best, anyhow, and now perhaps the wolves would sing to the skies once more of their failure to dispose of the human who dominated them.

Lucina tucked herself amongst the blankets and stared at him, her eyes moonstruck and a bit concerned, and he rinsed the blood away from his arms and hands to assess the damage done. They were too severe to ignore, but at the very least he still seemed to have full use of both hands, and this was pleasing not simply because his body was his livelihood and he could not survive without it working at full capacity, but also he was the one thing that stood between his injured guest and the pursuers of the night, the beasts that prowled about and sought to harm her. She required it, and he would sooner grapple with every wolf in the woods than see her lying in that pool of quicksilver blood as he had found her.

A droplet, wisps of his blood clouding its delicate curves, slid off his hand and he watched it splash into the gory bucket below. Throughout the mixture was inconsistent; crimson swam lazily in the crystal clear fluid, forming enchanting, arcane designs that perhaps held a secret power to one trained in such forbidden arts. It was as if he had peered into a witch's brew and it was just ripening to cast the deadly spell. Had some hag cooked such a curse in her cauldron and then laid it upon the poor pup?

"You look a little pale," Lucina commented hesitantly, pulling the quilt around her shoulders tighter. "You have weapons. Why did you fight the wolf without them?"

"In the moment, I didn't even consider them," he admitted somewhat gruffly. "I'm fine. You shouldn't worry."

"But I do. You wrestled him to save me, and all I could do was sit and watch. I'm useless." She huffed a bit and glared at herself. "Defenseless. If I had been a wolf as well-"

Suddenly, it was clear to him that her unusual circumstance, the bestial blood in her veins, it was all on purpose. She must have requested it somehow, and not considered the consequences, just like the girl he had imagined. Power, leadership, loyalty, anything vaguely related to the feral canines could land her with such a curse. Now he merely wondered what the witch had wanted by hexing a young woman.

By the time he had fixed her bandaging and seen to his own, night had fallen once more and her gruesome metamorphosis had commenced. This particular night her screams were hollow, mournful as if she too wished to lament the fall of the alpha, but for whatever reason they tugged at his heartstrings in a way nothing ever had. She was terrified and wracked with pain, and he assumed this meant she was also desperate for any sort of relief, even a moment's distraction from the transformation her boiling blood insisted upon. The moon was more distinctly waning, and that seemed to prolong the ordeal for the girl, who was beginning to lose her breath. She would wail, inhale sharply and shallowly several times, and then wail once more, and finally he could stand it no more. Between her howls, he approached swiftly and laid a hand on her back. It was a simple, perhaps demeaning gesture, but the moment of surprise in her whitened eyes told him she was at least a bit distracted. He rubbed her shoulder blades gently until they morphed under his hand and the head of the wolf whipped around to observe him.

"Should I not have intruded?" he asked softly, and mostly to himself.

She licked his hand and whimpered, still sore from the transformation, but he resumed his only means of comforting her and stroked the slight ruff of fur around her angular wolf face. If it truly helped he could not be certain, but she closed her eyes and exhaled heavily through her nose and seemed momentarily content. Soothing her through the night was not originally part of his plan in aiding her, but if it helped at all he was willing to try once. She was asleep in moments, but every time he removed his hand or attempted to move beyond seating himself at the foot of the bed she would crack open an eye and question why he had stopped.


	7. Cabin Fever

Thunder and torrential winds shook the tiny cabin as if an entire platoon of monsters were stomping through the forests, cutting trees aside as if they were mere weeds. Along with them came the lighter drumbeats of rain, a monsoon of sorts that crafted such a mist that when he opened the door to gauge the storm, he could not even see the trees ahead. The dampened gusts snuck past him and scattered across the floor, chilling the one-roomed structure so that Lucina, still partially asleep, shivered violently and receded deeper beneath the blankets to avoid it. When he realized her discomfort he fought the winds to shut the door once again, but he remained by it a minute more so that he could ponder the weather. He clearly would be tending a fire for the day, but he had not anticipated such a storm and there was a magnificence about its magnitude. The wood he had stacked outside would be soaking, so he would have to ration what was inside. For today, his world was limited to the four walls, the fireplace, and the naked woman.

Apparently she would transform back in her sleep, virtually painlessly so long as she was slumbering deeply, but just after dawn he had woken to her whimpers as a particularly gruesome morph had taken hold of her. Just like her excruciating change in the night, he had run his hand across her shoulders until she was a woman once again, and then he had noticed the rain. Now, she was completely still once more, other than the rise and fall of the blankets to indicate her breath, but he still struggled with the idea of her waking and realizing that the two of them were absolutely trapped in the frosty cabin. He started the fire to draw her into consciousness slowly, but the meager stack of brittle logs made his stomach twist nervously. Chopping wood was easy, but being completely prepared for mysterious storms that came in the night and swirled about the room without a thought to the occupants was impossible. He needed a better plan than the fire if the storm lasted longer than a day.

Lucina began to stir at the crackling of the fire, and when she pushed herself up and the quilt slipped from her shoulders he saw her skin rippled with gooseflesh. "Priam..."

Attentively, almost as if he was a dog himself, he faced her with mild concern. "It hurts more now. Why is that?"

"They wane and wax with the moon," she murmured breezily, the shiver and chill tangible in her voice. "But, Priam... The sound is overwhelming. So is the cold. What is it all?"

"Just a storm, and a fire. You can move closer to it, if you are too cold."

"You will be here all day, yes?"

"I cannot leave, not in this weather." He shook his head and brushed bark from his hands so that he could set about preparing a meal. Normally he cooked outside, where the scent was free to roam the woods, but today he would have to prepare food on a tiny fire that could sacrifice very little of its heat. Or they would eat uncooked plants or dried meat, but he was skeptical that her wolf side would allow him to feed her something like that. "Are you hungry?"

"No." Her arms were beginning to quiver under her own minuscule weight, and to save herself she sat up and slid her feet to the ground. "I need something to wear. It is too cold to remain like this."

"Of course." Suddenly he was embarrassed to the point of death, the realization that he had not once offered her clothing sinking into his simple mind. Had lust ruled him for so long? Was there something about her skin, delicate as a spiderweb when a drop of dew was strung from its unsupported center, or her hair, dark as a moonless night and glittering as if she had caught the stars, or maybe her eyes, the whirling infinite of secrets he could never begin to comprehend, two masterfully crafted liquid glass orbs containing hearts of azure fire, that made his body stir in ways he could not control? Perhaps it was merely because he was too stupid to realize that he had allowed her to remain sinfully naked, but somewhere in the depths of his terrible heart he knew it was not ignorance to be blamed. To redeem himself, for now his hands felt filthy and perverted, he dug around his few articles of clothing and found one shirt that was not stained by the woods, and he offered it to Lucina. With a belt, he determined, she would almost be wearing a real tunic, though the sleeves would not fit her and it would likely reek of him and of solitude.

She slid herself into the garment gracefully, a true princess in the way she draped the dramatically large sleeves over her bandaged arms, and he gave her the thinnest belt he owned to tie around her waist. Once she had, he felt an unfamiliar stirring, a primal emotion that reminded him of possession and something more akin to obsession, but he did not have the heart to admit to himself any sort of infatuation. Yes, she was lovely, he had established that, but now she was lovely and dressed in his clothing, bathed in his raw scent. Any remaining hostile wolves would be loath to challenge her now that she bore this mark.

"This is thicker than I imagined," she noted with a bit less innocence than he anticipated from her. "Warmer. Do you get cold easily?"

"The cold means nothing to me. I simply want to keep my skin intact when I walk through prickly areas in the woods."

"I can see how that may be true. But I think you do not want to admit weakness to me. You are strong, strong enough to wrestle wolves. If I were to know you were susceptible to the elements, I could sway you." She giggled softly and he turned away from her to monitor his fire. "I can see the gooseflesh on your arms. Do not try to hide it."

"There are many things I will never admit to you," he muttered cryptically, a bit worried that this response would only bring further questions.

"I know. You are a closed book. But I can read you better than you think."

"I doubt that."

"Doubt all you want, but noble ladies learn quickly how to tell which men are genuine in their advances. Wolves understand instinctual attraction. I know the name of that confusion you are feeling."

"I do not need your words," he growled dangerously, casting a smoldering glare back to her. She had no right to pick him apart, to pry open the cover of his complicated and idiotic tome and ponder the twisted sentences within. She was not allowed to voice what he did not want to be known. If she dared to search for answers, he would act rashly.

Lucina's expressionless face brightened then, illuminated by the flames and by some internal light she had kindled. "You poor man. You do not know what it is to be in love."

He stood so abruptly that he spilled a bucket of bloody water and extinguished the fire, plunging them into obscurity and smokey air. There were no words left in him to argue, to even explain or process what she had just accused, so he stepped towards the bed and his heart writhed under her undivided attention.

She continued, "You will believe me soon enough."


	8. An Established Dynamic

By evening he was ready to forget that he had ever brought the woman into his home, but that was mostly because he could not seek counsel from the woods so that he would be able to process her accusations. Almost as if to punish the pair of them, he let the fire smolder for close to an hour before he rebuilt it, and she had been silent for that long as well. There was no way to tell the time, save for the growing twilight that inked out the fog, but he was restless and had no desire to remain boxed in for another sleepless night. Of course, her pain would easily draw his attention again, and he would fall right back into that fickle mood of possession that she had labeled with an unfamiliar word. Perhaps he should ask her to explain before she became a wolf and he would be left to think for himself.

"Lucina," he said suddenly, prodding an ember with his boot, "I am not well versed in town life. Why would you say I am 'in love,' and what does that mean?"

It was not that he had never heard of such a thing, but when his father had dragged him by the ear into the forest, never to return to the unforgiving walls of man, the last he knew of love was that it occurred fleetingly and only in storybooks, where often those infected with infatuation were young and beautiful and lived whirlwind lives that ended with a simple, hopeful phrase. In the stories, princesses would succumb to the affections of their impoverish sweethearts, or peasant girls would fall deeply in love with a prince they should never have, and by the end of the tale both were equally engrossed with the other. To a lonely boy in the woods who hardly had an image of women left in his mind, this was a tad ridiculous. He had outgrown the notion. Of course, a castle princess who had landed herself in a curse would be more inclined to believe that her savior would break the wicked spell through love. Perhaps Lucina had allowed herself to be wounded on purpose so that he would rescue her, but after another brief observation he knew that was a lie. She was fragile, yes, but that was because she was shackled by bandages. Without them he assumed she would be a much more terrifying person.

"To be in love means you feel an incredible attraction to someone, an attraction that is stronger than what the wolves feel to the moon." She chuckled softly, then slipped from the bed to seat herself on the floor beside the fire. "I see it in the way you behave around me. You brawled a wolf for me, you bandaged me and fought with me so that I would keep my wounds covered, you sacrificed your bed for me. You carry your emotions in your face, so I can tell when you look at me that you are confused and trying to find answers."

"What if I am just curious about you, and why I found you bleeding in the woods?" he argued, secretly grateful that she was stirring his blood ever so slightly.

"That may also be," she allowed, "but I think you are more instinctual than that. You only care about my health, and the fact that I am a woman in your solitary domain."

"You make it sound as if this love is just me latching onto the first female I've managed to encounter."

"Perhaps. But—" she reached a hand towards the fire and without a thought he caught it, singeing the calloused back of his hand in the process to protect her flawless flesh, "if this were so simple you would have far less confusion when you think of me."

He could not argue with someone who was clearly more knowledgeable. "Alright, then. Say that I am in love. What else would you like to infer about me?"

For a few worrisome heartbeats she pondered, her eyes darting over his face, hands, and most especially his arms and shoulders that he had never bared in front of her. "I think you are afraid of people more than you hate them. I think that something terrible happened to your family while you were young, and I think that it scarred you. You cannot comprehend being in love because you have never been shown love yourself." She reached for his hand and ran her painfully sharp nails across the burn. "I think you are more sensitive than you realize, woodsman."

"I think that if you dare suggest anything of the sort ever again I will tie you up outside while you are a wolf," he threatened, though both his words and his tone were empty. "I will tell you what I think of you now. I think you were spoiled but wanted more, and landed yourself with a curse you could not anticipate. I think you were driven from your home and have no plans to leave mine because you have no place to go. Am I right?"

He knew once he had said it that he had been more accurate than she expected, so she remained silent and all too soon there were tears in her eyes. Apologies were foreign to him, though.

"You have not offended me," she explained with a voice as uncertain as his heart. "I merely thought I was so clever at reading you, and this whole time you could see right through me."

"I am not the only one who carries their emotions on their face," he offered. A sliver of a smile appeared on her delicate lips, so he continued, "Perhaps we should not talk. Talking makes things confusing for me."

"Of course. You are more of a wolf than I."

Now they shared equally broken smiles, and he tended the fire until night had descended completely and their last log crumbled into dying coals. He watched her face as it was plunged into black, noticing how even as she was smudged into shadows and became nothing, her eyes were piercing and alert, almost glowing. One was lighter than the other, and bore a subtle mark that resembled a shield and a teardrop, and he observed it with complete focus until he realized that she had held in her voice and become a wolf while he stared. This he understood; he ruffled her unkempt mane and pulled the bandages from her powerful legs to see the wounds had sealed off and could be left uncovered now, and when the last ember lost its glow he felt the bite of the storm sinking into his own flesh, everywhere except the burn on his hand and the scabs from his scuffle with the wolf.

Lucina, somehow able to comprehend his discomfort, nudged him with her muzzle and laid herself down beside him with her head in his lap. She was warm, burning comfortably the way a wolf should, and he nodded off with the comforting knowledge that neither of them would freeze in the night.

When morning came, heralded by a softer, more forgiving rain, he was roused by an unfamiliar sensation, and when he dared open his eyes he was prone on his back, covered by his own quilt like a land hidden under a shroud of darkness, and Lucina was stepping into the cabin with neatly killed rabbits. She had dried blood smeared across her chest but otherwise seemed completely ordinary, and after she set aside her rabbits she kneeled before him and patted the top of his head.

"I decided that if I have no desire to leave I might as well earn my keep," she explained with a hint of smugness. "During the day we will not talk, I promise. I do not want to confuse you. But during the night I will accompany you into the woods and we will hunt together."

"Deal," he muttered groggily with his mind still haunted by dreams, "but only if we forget everything that was said during the storm."

"You are welcome to try."


	9. Imminently Diurnal

For two weeks they cooperated silently. By day, one would sleep while the other tended to the chores of the house, and they would trade intermittently so that, come nightfall, they were rested and excited for the hunt. Entering the woods with a magnificent wolf at his side like a loyal hound filled him with boundless pride. They commanded the forest, able to reach the highest nests and the lowest burrows, epic and mighty but silent and merciless as well, and Lucina was perfect as a setter, retriever, and guard, tuned precisely to his intentions in every moment. Communication came in the form of a glance at a tree, or a foot placed particularly, or a body drawn tight in preparation for a strike. Two minds, one wavelength, that was how they interacted. By the end of the first week they had employed the service of the woods' resident wolf pack, who now deferred to Priam—the one who had defeated their leader and bore the scent of a wolf—and would scare deer into the path of the one human. He was finally one with them, able to walk through trees and brush without subconsciously fearing the one territorial creature who could overpower him through sheer numbers.

Often throughout this silence he wondered the fate of the fallen alpha. It was likely that the great beast had crawled back to his den and slept forever, but he could easily have moved away from these woods in an attempt to rebuild his pack where no creatures would know his disgrace, but the triumphant songs of Priam's newfound followers would ensure all wolves in hearing distance would shun this defeated beast. It would be a depressing, moribund existence, perhaps a greater hell than whatever afterlife awaited weak alpha males, and it occurred to Priam that the same would someday happen to him. He was able to keep the wolves at bay for now, but the moment he lost a battle, whether it be to a species of greater strength or to his companion that knew his most obvious secrets, he would fall and enter the rejected realm. It had happened to his father as well; the man had been legendary in folk tales and legends, but when he battled the reaper for the soul of his wife he had lost entirely, left with nothing but a burdensome offspring that had her eyes and an emptiness that drew him away from the cowardly world of men. He passed the essentials down, as any mammalian sire would do instinctually, and when Priam had been so very young his father hiked into the woods and disappeared. His weathered bow that Priam used in hunts now was abandoned on his favorite hunting trail, and his bones were strewn about the summer den of a grizzly, to be discovered the winter following his disappearance and buried in the snow instead of the earth. Mortality was a curious thing; to the wolf and to his father, life ended when their thrones crumbled beneath them and they were cast aside by the victor of an ultimate battle. Hunting in the woods now, picking through them as if to uproot every last secret, he felt himself growing melancholy, even when he knew that his successes with Lucina should be cause for joy. She may be observant enough to detect the shift in his behavior and attitude, but even she, who could flush a rabbit from its burrow and catch it in the same stride, would never be able to pick him apart enough to discover these morbid thoughts. He would not destroy her confidence with his uncertainty.

And in the midst of everything, he found that he truly was unable to forget her accusation, and he wondered how this instinct she labeled as love related to his increasingly frequent musings on the rise and fall of the wolves. His father, the bones beneath the snow, had once loved, and it had been a losing struggle in the end.

The rain remained sporadically throughout those two weeks. He had learned to ignore it when he was in the woods, and it no longer trapped him when he was in the cabin. He and Lucina had taken to stacking firewood inside so that it would dry, even though it constricted their space even more, and they had adjusted the chimney to free more smoke on the days they had to keep the fire constant. As they went about these tasks, they would attempt to communicate as they did in the woods when it was effortless, instinctual, but her eyes conveyed entirely different signals in the day. He could not comprehend her, and he caught himself numerous times staring at the little shield mark she bore, wondering if it hindered her sight or if it was a symbol of her curse, and when she attempted to send a message he would be oblivious. During the daytime they were ice and fire, desperate to spread a common warmth but remaining steadfast in their ignorance and newfound intolerance. He began to hate the human, as she hated the homebound him, just as he loved the wolf while she loved the huntsman. Two people, three wavelengths, four minds. The numbers confused him and only furthered his pensive proclivity.

As the half moon dawned in their perfect nocturnal world, he was growing less and less eager for the hunt. She was agitated, restless, her transformation heralding itself prematurely by mild throbbing pains, which she rubbed or scratched at until they subsided, but nearly half the night had passed before she finally succumbed to the full effects of the metamorphosis. He led the way into the woods as usual, and they brought a great deer to its knees through the help of the pack, but he lacked the motivation to carry the carcass home. She understood, as she always did in the night, and they left the glorious catch to the wild wolves, and returned to the overstocked cabin empty-handed. It was truly a nightmare; it had become too easy and they had turned a proud survival tactic into a mere sport, and to make matters worse she had another two weeks before they would face a changeless night. So that he had time to think, he led them through a longer trail home, and it was dawn when they arrived. She became human again just outside the cabin and he carried her inside so that the forest would not know her nudity. Once this was complete, she broke their unwritten vow and murmured, "What next?"

What next, indeed. Their pastime was now unnecessary, they were growing apart as domestic humans, and soon they would have to exist as simply that. He knew that the hammer to break this block lay somewhere in a conversation they were yet to have, but that frightened him more than mortality. "Something will need to be done soon. An emergency."

"You are tense," she noted, her eyes darting across him almost shyly, shielded by her lashes that formed the perfect screen. "We... We cannot survive another day like the storm. One of us will snap."

"I know. But it will not come to that." He shook his head and seated himself in the bed, slumped forward so that his chin could rest in his hand.

"I think," she asserted with sudden certainty, "we need to do what we do in the woods. We need to communicate and cooperate, but it does not work to take what the wolves do and make ourselves live that way. In the woods we can talk without words, but as humans–"

"As humans we must communicate like humans," he finished for her, only interrupting her because he was beginning to feel their thoughts aligning. "But the way we do in the woods. The details only if they are important, the instincts, that sort of communication."

"Exactly." She seemed pleased by his progression of thought, and after tugging the oversized sleeves of her borrowed dress up a bit she sat beside him on the bed. "So we have to speak with words as well as actions."

"Because that is what humans do."

"That is what humans do."

He uttered a thought suddenly, almost unaware as it passed through his lips, "Humans who are close also touch. When we are in the woods we touch and it means something different than here."

"I was just thinking the same," she admitted, which stirred his blood in an unfamiliar manner. "We must be allowed to touch also. Especially in this house." For a moment she looked back to her hands, then to his, studying the faded scar from his burn and the callouses on his fingers from the bow. "I will go first, then. There is a difference between you carrying me out of necessity and me touching you out of want."

He comprehended but still felt hesitant. The possession was back, the superiority over all other beings because he and this woman bore the same scent and she was assimilated into his solitude, but with it came reluctance to actually see her as tangible. If she existed, she could be taken. Yet, it was a risk he was willing to take. He nodded, and she reached a subtly quivering hand towards his face, and rested it so that her thumb reached his cheekbone but her palm graced his jawline.

Her skin was every bit as precious as it appeared, so delicate and intricately crafted that he almost worried his coarse stubble would unravel her flesh and she would fade into mist, but the pressure from her hand was more secure than he had anticipated. Beneath her ethereal exterior was a hardened hunter as well. He began to see the appeal of being a hound that received such a tender touch from its master, but this was better. He could touch back, and he did. They could not bring themselves to look one another in the eye, but they enjoyed the contrast between their bodies until she was taken by reaction that belonged in the obscure nightly woods; her lips alighted on his nose.


	10. Myths With Meaning

That night he dreamed he was in the woods, alone. The only trees that he could see were those immediately surrounding him; otherwise the forest was black fog that swirled and writhed like a pile of infant dogs. Though he was meandering in the unknown, he was not afraid, and he still navigated each step as if this was the selfsame forest he commanded during the day. He wandered it aimlessly, perhaps searching for a meal or perhaps in thought, but after what seemed like an eternity or maybe a handful of heartbeats he came across a gorgeous wolf. It was a noble beast with a thick winter pelt, muscles taught beneath the platinum fur and nonexistent stars glittering as if they had been woven into the undercoat. Her eyes were especially piercing, almost compelling. He felt that he would do anything for those eyes, should a wolf decide suddenly it wanted something from a human, and he realized suddenly that in her left eye was a strange marking, like a teardrop and a shield. He drew a sword, not a sword he had ever imagined before nor seen in the material world, and sliced cleanly across the chest of the creature, barely scraping aside its fur. The created seam parted, fading the way stardust is blown across the heavens, and from the newly formed cavity emerged a woman with dark hair and infinite eyes, bearing the same brand as the wolf in the same eye. She was obscure, as if she were someone familiar but he could not pinpoint her exact features, yet she seemed grateful to him.

When he awoke, mind still scattered from the ethereal dream, Lucina was at the window, gazing longingly into the woods. She was speaking softly, perhaps to herself but he found it odd that her musing voice was just audible enough to be detected.

"Perhaps in a few years it will be safe, though," she commented, replying to someone he had not heard speak. "Not enough to openly proclaim my identity, but I could walk the streets without a hood. Their revolutionary is likely a tyrant, too. But... There were so many rebels, it will be hard to know how they still view us. And the wolf..."

"Should I know what this means?" He rose from the bed and stepped respectfully towards her. "There are no streets or rebels here."

"Ah." She jumped a bit at his voice, but could not conceal her pleased smile. "No, this is all things from my past. From the city where I was born. If you knew any of it I would be genuinely surprised."

"Perhaps I am interested in learning."

"Perhaps." She chuckled and so did he, softly, and when she turned her eyes back upon him he was drawn towards them magnetically, stirrings of his dream rising once more. "But talking is not for a man like you. I know now you respond best to physical cues."

After she had kissed him-he still was unable to believe it had truly happened-he had been tuned to her wavelength, the human one he normally could not comprehend, and she manipulated him with wisps of contact from the tips of her fingers until he was laying down and she was pressed against his chest for comfort until the pains of transformation took her in the night. He had never been malleable in such a way before, but she was an excellent craftsman. It was almost embarrassing, to succumb to caressing and allow that to be his thoughts and actions, but he had justified himself after the fact because he had such limited and undesirable contact with humans otherwise. Before, his life had been black and white; he had to satisfy his own basic needs to survive, or else join his father in whatever hell existed for alphas, and now there was a silver median between the two. He could choose life, death, or the peculiar purgatory that existed between them and Lucina named love.

"Your face is turning red," she teased, stepping past the respectful barrier so that she was intimately close to him. "There is no reason to feel any shame, woodsman. Ignorance only means there is room to be taught."

"You will be teaching me a long time, then." Because of her proximity he felt it safe to brush the smoothest part of his cracked and calloused hand across her cheek, attempting to hide from her eyes at the same time because they seemed to do almost as much directing as her poking. "Are many people like this?"

"Ignorant? Of course. And many of them are too ignorant to be saved, but it is not their fault. You learn to forgive them, or else ignore them entirely." She caught his hand before it could return to his side and held it instead to her cheek.

"I meant like you." He lacked the eloquence to choose his words carefully. "Soft."

Her nails scratched at his healing burn as if to warn him, but it did not hurt. "I am not soft."

"Your skin is. And the way you talk to me." Every word from his mouth felt foreign, spoken by a stranger with his voice, and he barely comprehended them himself.

"Oh." This was far less insulting, and she smiled tranquilly at him, her scratching becoming rubbing. "No, not many people are like this. But not many people are like you, either, and I think that is what I like about you." She removed his hand at last and held it between her own, her padded palms barely encasing his fingers. "Of course, it is not the only thing. But enough talking, I can see you are confused. What would you like to do today?"

"Teach me something. What is it you village people do when you are not occupied by other troubles?"

"I suppose," her vivid eyes flashed, "we should explore and you can tell me all the legends of the woods."

"They have no legends," he replied, puzzled. "These are just woods."

"Surely you have stories of them to share. People you have found, strange and mythical beasts, anything."

"I could tell you of how I met a werewolf." Suddenly he thought of the one story he could tell. "I could tell you about the day my father died."

"Is it a legend?" She released his hand and tilted her head.

"Of sorts. Once I tell it, though, you have to rewrite it to be a better story. My talking is not the best."

"Alright, then. Tell me this story."

For quite some time he recounted to her the tale, when his father had brought them into the forest and they had built a cabin and lived there for years, but when Priam had seen only eleven winters his father had left, gone into the woods without a word. Priam waited, hoping the man would return any day, and in the meantime he checked the snares and learned to repair them, and fetched his own water and wood, and when winter settled that year he had finally braved the woods in search of his father, finding his bow on a trail. The next expedition on the following day led him all the way to the summer den of a great hulking bear, who was not yet in hibernation, and he had fought off the creature with wit and his father's bow, but the beast lumbered away and lived. The third day he returned to the now abandoned den and discovered bones strewn about its floor, and only the skull of a man allowed him to identify his father. It was tragic but Priam had not mourned; his father had existed in the black world of death long before the bear took his life. He brought the bones that were undeniably his father's outside, unsure of what to do with them, and when he returned on the fourth day with a plan, it had snowed and he never found the bones after that. When he concluded the tale, Lucina's eyes were misty but she was nodding pensively.

"That is a legend," she agreed, taking a seat on the floor of the cabin beside the coals from a recent fire. "The only thing that needs to be written is the part where you fight the bear again and defeat it once and for all."

"I think that the bear is something else now."

"What do you mean?"

He told her vaguely of his dream, and concluded, "I think that the thing I need to defeat is not the bear. It was, but now it is something different."


	11. Comprehension of the Beast

Eventually the day began to fade into evening, and Lucina convinced him to join her outside to watch the stars blink open before she was unable to enjoy the night. He liked watching her, bathed in the powdery light of the celestial bodies, because she was so peaceful, about to drift into sleep but just perceptive enough to marvel at the nocturnal heavens and be just as awed by its majesty as he was. They were equals under the darkened sky, side by side in the minuscule little woods. He felt as if they belonged, him to her and her to him.

"They say the stars are the souls of people who have passed," Lucina murmured, her voice a bit rough as if she were speaking with the throat of the wolf. "But when my grandfather died, we all questioned the truth of that."

"Poetic." Priam scratched his chin and frowned at the sky through the trees. "I've never heard anything about the stars, but I once heard that the trees were spirits."

"I could tell you that legend. And there are more spirits in the water, too." She glanced sideways at him, her smile knowing and smug and just a bit condescending, he thought. "What stories do you know about the tree spirits?"

"I don't know any stories. It was just something my father told me when he taught me to chop wood." He muttered halfheartedly to himself and laid back so that the grass was his bed. The blades rubbed what skin he had left exposed in an irritating and uncomfortable manner, as if exploiting his powerlessness, and he thought ever more of Lucina. Now that she had learned he would submit to her hands she wielded the hegemony of the household. Once he had been alone, isolated, but then he had been a king. When he lived with such liberty, he bowed to nothing but the elements, and even then he liked to imagine that it was by free will that he chose to remain indoors when it snowed; the kingdom had consisted of him and no one else, but he had been its god. Now, with this woman who could read his early years through the slope of his shoulders, the population had doubled and received a new deity, and she was every bit as malevolent as she was magnanimous, he determined. If a storm ever came again, she would personally escort him to the sky to banish it, but then abandon him as the lightning rolled in. And yet, even as she wrested command and masculinity from his very grasp, his heart swelled to know he had nurtured her into this state of sudden power. He had found her a dying beast, and from it tempered a sorceress, a queen worthy to ascend into the stars. The thought was selfish and bold, but its truth could not be denied. He had crafted something from her.

"We could use some more materials for blankets," she commented suddenly, much softer than before. "So that I can have a place to sleep when I am a wolf, and you can take back your own bed."

"It is rude of me to sleep in a bed while my guest uses the floor," he argued. Adjusting to match her tone was not an instinctive skill for him as of yet. "I have no issues with the floor."

"Except that autumn has descended and you get cold easily," she reminded him as she tugged at the thick sleeve of the shirt across her slender arms. "You take the bed. I have thicker skin."

"I do not like what you are implying."

"I know, but I do not mean any insult." Suddenly she jerked her chin upward and her eyes filled with celestial light as a shooting star skated across the glassy sky. Something deep within her had taken hold, a primal reaction as elusive as her transformation, and he sat back up to observe in wonder. How could he remedy the situation, or did she even require aid? When her lips parted, it was deliberate, the opening of a young rose into the sunlight for the first time, and her voice was preternatural, "A soul just abandoned its post. Where would it have gone?"

"To be reborn?" he suggested, utterly baffled by her in every way. "You are the expert on stars. What does it mean?"

"Perhaps," she began ponderously, "it is a sign that something that once seemed eternal is now different? Or something will come to pass, something altering."

He could comprehend both, given the circumstances of his lodgings and the unwelcome tug in his chest, but he believed it could only be an omen for the future. That unknown event would haunt him until he could finally understand it in a visual, tactile way, but when it came to this gray existence between the light of pure life and the black of ultimate death, nothing was tangible.

To save himself the terrible stirrings that arose when she spoke in that magnificent whisper, he quickly determined a new topic. "I can make a trip into town tomorrow, for those blankets, but we will have to sell some of what we have a caught recently. We can rebuild the complete stockpile after."

"I..." From the way she pinched and prodded at the dainty flesh of her arms, he could tell that her metamorphosis would come at any moment, but he hoped this last topic would ease her mind as she changed. "I like that. We can hunt again together, at least for a little." She inhaled sharply and her eyes were then eclipsed by the waning moon, so he placed a hand on her shoulder and only listened to her with a portion of his usual attention. "When we had no reason to hunt... I was afraid we were going to lose our one means of connection. But it seems this still unites us. Perhaps... it is not so much of a curse... after all."

The morph was excruciating, but he allowed her to writhe in his arms and seek comfort from contact until he held the wolf instead of the woman. Perhaps it was not a curse; he understood the wolf perfectly, and that allowed the woman to observe his intentions through a clear lens. He ruffled her mane and grinned, pleased with the thought of her suffering eased by his attention. "We have enough in common as it is. Tomorrow I will buy you a real dress so that we can still be told apart."


	12. Inscrutable Ghosts

For the rest of the night she had very little energy, but that did not stop her from investigating the nearby woods and the exterior of the cabin, always remaining within human earshot of Priam. He enjoyed her curiosity and found it refreshing, considering the biggest mystery of her life for the past few days had been him. Now she could focus on something else, something much more simple, and he was free to marvel at the fact that his secret boyhood dream of owning a dog had, in a strange and terrible way, come true. He beckoned her inside when at last it seemed there was an hour or two left before dawn, and when he attempted to offer her the bed, she refused until he sat down first. In the back of his mind was a primal happiness at the idea that he would wake up just a bit later and find Lucina next to him, but he did not consider this and instead fell into a dreamland that was desolate but beautiful as the night sky. A flickering of his prophetic dream returned, the woman clambering from the skin of the wolf, but he chose to forget that piece. It worried him, and he was not a natural worrier.

When the tendrils of red and orange trickled into the room, Priam awoke. She was there, glowing softly like a goddess and pressed tightly against his chest for warmth. She was also naked once more, as her clothes had been left outside after her transformation, and her flesh was electric underneath his fingertips. He was content to remain there for a bit longer, his ward and master protected from the prowling creatures of the night so long as she remained encased between the scars on his arms. The fading burn on his hand prickled a bit as he thought about how instinctual it was to throw himself in front of her, no matter how tame the threat. Already he had battled wolves and fire, and for what? Why exactly was this creature able to control him so absolutely, and why did he submit to her when he was at least twice her weight and composed of the ores of the woods? It was witchcraft stronger than any curse she may bear, and yet it was a type of black magic that was more profound and dangerous than all other hexes combined. He was cursed, too.

He rose, leaving her tucked under the quilt she seemed so fond of, and began to strap on his boots in anticipation of the journey to town he had promised. It was not an errand he agreed to do lightly, but it was another opponent that could endanger his guest, and it would be fascinating to watch scummy peddlers throw their useless wares on unsuspecting peasants. He was large and intimidating enough to scare most potential scams away, and when occasionally a potions master would actually tempt him into buying a mysterious brew, he was impervious to such weak magic. A strength potion could not begin to add to what he already possessed, and a beauty potion was wasted the moment it passed through his unbreakable jaws. The best of the usual conmen stayed safely away when the woodsman was in town.

As he prepared himself to leave by sheathing a knife at his belt, Lucina awoke and slipped silently out of bed, blinking lethargically to erase traces of the wolf and to preserve her eyes from so much light so suddenly. She approached him like a specter, her feet barely gracing the floor and her hair cascading across her chest and shoulders like a waterfall made of a moonless night, and he turned his back on the door to face her fully.

"I promised I would go to the town," he reminded her, more for himself than for an explanation for her. "I think that I can pay for everything we need without selling any of our store, but I can hunt for something fresh just in case."

"You are quite the imposing figure," she commented breezily, sliding her dainty hands across his jaw. "I see no reason for any merchant to refuse to sell for your price."

"Say what you like, but I have never gotten anything for free." He clenched his fists for a moment but then relaxed; it was much more difficult to fight the rising adrenaline than to allow it to consume him for a moment. "I will not steal, either. I am above that."

"Quite literally," she teased. For a moment she seemed mesmerized by something on his face, and she smiled contentedly but also longingly. He had a vision of an ancient memory, one in which his father had bid farewell to a formless woman that was most likely his mother, and the phantom had laughed at his father and cupped his face in her delicate hands and then rested her lips against his. "Do what you will, then. Return soon, so that I will not have to wait here, lonely, all day."

Before he could reply, she had wrapped her arms around his neck and stood up on her toes to better reach every inch of him. This sort of voluntary contact was new to him, but something about the concept was tantalizing. Perhaps he would be permitted to try the same thing when he returned bearing gifts. She was incredibly thin compared to him, and her warmth was flickering as if he were attempting to embrace a candle in the wind, but it pleased him even so.

"I will not be gone long," he promised, and with that she was satisfied. She released him and stepped back, returning to the bed to cloth herself with the quilt, and bid him farewell with a slight wave and a grin more radiant than the dawn that had illuminated the forest.

He trekked swiftly through the woods, the map back to civilization ingrained into his mind despite his reluctance to return to it, and each step that drew him closer to the walls of men seemed to carve into his comprehension of the woman in his cabin. He had been alone for many months now, and perhaps he had finally lost himself and dreamed the entire ordeal. Everything from binding her wounds to battling wolves and even experiencing her gruesome metamorphosis beneath his fingertips could exist in the planes of his imagination, and if that were true he may as well stroll into the dungeons now while his head was clear. Entering the town, however, supported everything he had experienced when it came to Lucina.

Townsfolk were strewn about the streets, clustered as if they were semi-intelligent forms of lichen and could not survive without a wall behind them and a handful of other people surrounding them, and many of them exchanged scraps of paper and seemed to think themselves so clever about it. He was perceptive; every brief flick of the wrist or flutter of paper was documented by him until he was able to close in on one of the clumps like a bear cornering an unfortunate herd of deer. At first the people seemed not to notice him, and in fact a stranger slipped one of the scraps into his hand before she seemed to realize he was the elusive woodsman and she suddenly attempted to rescind the accidental gift by standing in his path.

"Man like you wouldn't know what to do with something like that," she scolded as she swiped, but he easily held it above her reach.

"What is it?" he questioned, more of a demand because he was so absolute in comparison to her feeble peasant build. The others had stepped back, terrified and floundering, but he suspected that they would not call the guards to investigate the disturbance to their secret little gathering.

"Why, it's just a bit of paper. Nothing for a solitary man." Almost forlornly she reached again, knowing full well she would have to convince him or bribe him the way she did when dealing with all other street urchins. "Give that back, now. I don't have enough to go around the town, and you surely want no part of this."

"Perhaps I do." He folded the slip between his fingers and slid it into the frayed leather pouch he kept on his side that contained a handful of coins and some line in case he needed to fix a snare, while the woman watched in dismay. "You will explain to me or you will stand down."

"Surely there is something that can convince you to forget this little incidence?"

"I do not forget." Briefly Lucina crossed his mind, her dainty human flesh left exposed to the barbs and claws of the woods, and he narrowed his eyes. "Regardless, I am willing to remain silent, in exchange for a few necessities."

"Yes, of course. Anything!" The woman beckoned forth her companions, who bore the packs of traveling merchants and suddenly seemed as eager to sell to him as if the king of the land had demonstrated interest in them. There were all sorts of strange costumes and jewels he did not recognize, ornaments he did not need, and scrolls he certainly would never read. However, amongst the more elaborate fashions were some simpler dresses that appeared hardy enough for the outdoors, and another merchant still proffered thick slabs of cloth and neatly stitched blankets. If this was how willing these underlings were to buy his silence, he saw no harm in accepting their gracious offers. He pointed to a few dresses, his callous gaze enough to stanch impending questions, and then to a particularly luxurious cloth that could be stitched into an excellent mantle. Lastly, he selected a particularly arcane tome, and with these treasures secured he passed a scrap of paper back to the woman. She was immediately relieved. "I knew even you would understand. Be on your way, then, and say nothing."

That was an order he could oblige willingly, especially as he hid the book with its newly torn first page under the blanket with the woman's taboo little paper still guarded in his pouch. He could not read, at least not well enough to apprehend every sliver of secrets contained in the scrap when he managed to glance at it, but he had noticed a rather accurate sketch of a lovely maiden, her dress drawn to be elaborate and expensive while her hair was long and slightly unkempt, especially considering the regality in her swiftly scribbled face. There was no denying, however, that the subject of the portrait and its cryptic message was Lucina.


	13. Meeting the Princess

He allowed her to choose from the dresses so that she would have something lovely to wear for once, and as soon as she was satisfied with the lay of the intricate designs that seemed perfectly cut for her frame, he spoke of what he had seen in town, and of the woman who had attempted to exclude him from her conspiracy. He showed her the scrap he had stolen, and marveled at how the drawing resembled her especially now that she was clothed in something tasteful. He could not read the scrawled handwriting of the note, even as he forced himself to study it, so he handed it to her in hopes her palace education gave her an advantage in deciphering it. Holding the paper made her slender hands quiver, her scabbed wounds becoming more pronounced in the process, but she translated for him, "All true citizens restore Her Majesty Princess Lucina to the throne."

"What does that mean?" he asked immediately, watching her face carefully for signs of discomfort. Answers were not worth that price.

"It means the peasants who usurped my father's throne have realized they are no better rulers than he," she growled, suddenly frowning. "I knew there was a large opposition to the rebellion, a majority, in fact, but they were unarmed. They knew rebels were coming to kill us and they hid in their homes."

"It is not the job of the subjects to defend the monarchs," he argued grimly, recalling that his father had once been some great hero and had complained incessantly thereafter about the spoiled expectations of the ruling class.

"I know, and perhaps it is selfish to wish that they had," she allowed this much as if to please him, but it was almost as if he had placed the crown upon her himself, "but there were murderers in my home and... had I not done something, even something as desperate as seeking protection from the witch-"

"And you begged for power and she gave you a curse."

"I begged for power and she gave me a curse." Lucina crushed the measly scrap in an enraged fist and hurled it at him. "Do not speak to me in that condescending tone. You think I deserve what came to me? You think I deserve to be mauled by wolves after wandering in vain for months? You think I deserve to be driven from my home when the unrest of the people was no fault of my own?"

He knew she wanted a fight, an intense match to determine whose lungs could bellow the loudest—he knew he would win until she transformed—but it was not worth screaming at her to make her see that he had little sympathy for those who had been cast from luxury. "I cannot judge what you deserve."

"You are a hunter, of course you have no sympathy for destroying a way of life."

"You are the greatest hunter I have ever seen. Do not accuse me of destroying life when you flushed prey from the bushes like a hound."

"A hound? Now I see. I am deserving to be your hound and nothing more. Nothing higher. And now they seek to return me to the throne and I cannot return."

"What is stopping you?"

He he anticipated the answer. It had been the answer to everything, the missing piece in her elaborate tapestry, the drive behind her very existence then and there, in his minuscule little cabin that was swallowed by the vast woods. Her curse trapped her to the life of a beast; she was not content to remain locked in any sort of cage, no matter how gilded. The lament of the beast's soul that slumbered within her would be heard every night if she returned, and thus it would be a triumphant coronation as she mounted her own funeral pyre. She would return to die, a lamb mindlessly following all the others to the slaughter, blood no more innocent than his own spilled by the town he hated. In some ways he cared; she had been somewhat of an adventure and he could not deny that her presence and her touch controlled him, and he would feel a touch of sadness when he returned home and was alone, and most of all he did not see why she should have to die, but this new Lucina was not his hunting partner, this was some spoiled princess who demanded pity from him despite the fact that he had never lived under her rule in the past. Her fate did not concern him. But he could not shake the impending doom that came with the idea of her death.

"You," she stated simply, obviously, and then no amount of finery could change his wolf girl into a princess.

That night he took her into the woods again. They had precious few hours to roam, and the waning sliver of moon lit their path brilliantly. He brought a bow and shot at the creatures she drove towards him, intentionally missing each one so that they would have to spend longer together in the woods that brought them so close. Two minds, one wavelength. When finally he hit his mark in the neck of an owl, they paused and marveled at the bird together, and then it became a game. They left the body of the owl in a nice hidden spot to be retrieved later, and then he chased her while she barked and snapped ferociously at him, humor in her abyssal eyes. Once he caught her they wrestled, rolling through the filthy debris of the woods and cutting themselves on nasty hidden thorns. He could almost hear her laughter when his hair snagged on a root, but shortly after she misstepped directly into a shallow ditch and he was able to gain the upper hand. They played until the moon disappeared and she transformed in the woods, and once more he carried her back to his home and laid her in his bed.

She woke briefly and before he could leave her side she had stretched a delicate hand up to brush her fingers across his jaw, and he determined that if he allowed the princess to return to her kingdom, even if she survived his wolf would not. He was glad to be the barrier keeping her in the woods, and to prove it he took her hand and kissed her fingers.

"You do not need to return," he told her after it was done, but she was too awestruck to reply. "You are already queen of something."


	14. Peace Perturbed

They heard little from the civilized world after that cryptic note Priam had intercepted, but he could tell it wore heavy on her mind when he was not there to occupy her. Sometimes at night, when she was preparing for the transformation, a glassy look came over her eyes and she would stare in the direction of the town as if entranced. He considered intervening but knew that when she was the wolf she would no longer care for the walls and cobbled roads of town. It nagged at the corners of his mind as well, because he knew and secretly feared that the human part of her that still remembered civility and nobility would someday return to her former home, to be killed or lost to him forever. Much as he loathed to admit it, he was beginning to realize that he despised isolation, and could not handle being abandoned again.

As the moonlight grew slimmer, its dark face expanding in the sky each night, so too did the dread of impending solitude darken his mind. The black moon could only bring a night where she would not change at all. With a full day and night to fill her human mind with coherent thoughts, she might decide to leave and act upon it. First, a long time ago in the story of a boy with a heroic father, the duo had been thoroughly shaken by the tragedy of his mother's sudden disappearance, and then later when the boy's fairy tale had ended and his woodsman life was budding, he faced the loss of his father as well, and henceforth lived alone. Perhaps all those years he had considered the woods his refuge he had truly been insane. The darkness of this thought and the tragedy of his loneliness spread through his mind rapidly, infectiously, tainting even his most joyful thoughts with dismay and somber emptiness. It was a fever that raged from his brain to his heart, until he was so full of fear he could barely distinguish himself from a scrawny rabbit that flees at the slightest hint of change. For long hours of the day he left for the woods, attempting to seek solace in felling trees and snaring deer, followed loyally by his new wolves, though he had little use for them and merely offered them scraps of his catch. If and when she left, he would still have them, of course. The forest was his kingdom and humans were hers; he had to accept that in spite of this peculiar attachment he had formed and she named "love".

Obscurity ascended at last in place of the moon. He knew he had to at least see her off when she made her decision, so he waited in silence as the windows turned to murky voids and the small fire at the heart of the cabin flickered feebly to light their thighs and stomachs as they knelt beside it. He saw the itch in her skin, detected the sharp but soft exclamations of pain she attempted to hide, and waited for the discomfort to pass. The flames lit her eyes in eccentric but lovely ways, highlighting their azures and ceruleans and definitely magnifying the curious shield in the one. He pondered on it with no words to his thoughts until her raspy voice overcame the silence.

"I can never go back," she breathed through an agonizing throat, her voice that of the human he despised. "Not as the princess. Not as what they want."

"Not as what they want," he agreed softly, more to soothe her than to continue the conversation.

"The only way..." She squeezed her eyes shut and doubled over, and he saw her fingers furrowed deep within her own skin, almost ready to tear apart her own arms. "I... never want... to see them..."

Concern flooded him torrentially, and he crept closer on hands and knees to investigate what methods of his could possibly aid her. He was wrong to think that tonight her mind would be at its most acute. "You do not have to think of this now. Think of something else."

"Like what?" she gasped, one hand lashing out to tear into his arm. He took the pain as a reward for his actions and watched for a heartbeat longer, feeling the yawning darkness in his mind fill up with the light of the moon that always summoned his wolf. All he had to do was translate the light he saw in his mind to words that would save her this torment.

"Remember how I said I had no legends about the trees? That I knew they were spirits but nothing more?"

She nodded, but all he could see was the ripple of her hair like the tossing of the rapids.

"I lied. I know one legend." He paused, exploring all he had learned from her to concoct the story of which he feigned knowledge. "The pine and the cherry trees. The pine liked to grow in disorder, all over the place in chaotic forests of unrivaled size. But the cherry preferred rows and structure. The spirits would leave the trees at night and argue, because the cherry orchards produced useful fruit and all the pine woods did was inconvenience others. So by day the trees attempted to grow into the opposing territory, and by night they met with swords made from boulders and branches. It was a terrible war. But, there was one cherry spirit whose tree was the largest and always bore the most fruit, and she hated seeing the war. She snuck off one night and met with a wandering pine spirit, garbed for war in his wooden armor, and they talked. She convinced him to remove his armor and he did, and though the war continued that night and every night after, those two continued to meet and talk and be at peace."

Tentatively, she straightened back into a sitting position, still pained but not in absolute agony. There was a slim but sincere and pleased smile on her face, which warmed his heart and drove away the feverish worry in his heart. "I like that. Who taught it to you?"

"The cherry tree," he replied without a thought.

"When did you meet?" After a moment of slightly labored breathing, she regarded him with a new and hopeful excitement in her eyes. "Could you... take me? Would she tell me legends?"

While he followed maps and trails in his mind to try and find one instance of a wild cherry tree he had seen, for of course there had to have been one to inspire the story, a strange shimmer appeared in the windows, and then there was the sharp report of a wolf's howl cut short. All thoughts of his myth were lost, and they both turned wary eyes to the glass. Fierce possession consumed him suddenly as he recognized the glow. These were his woods, and this was his territory, and the girl was under his protection.

He stood and approached the window, first experiencing a twinge of anguish as he realized someone had shot an arrow in the flank of one of his wolves while the other stood protectively beside it and in front of his door, and then rage eclipsed all sense of mercy he had ever felt. The unwanted light came from torches, and steadily filling air were the footsteps and fearful murmurs of humans.


	15. Denial

They both knew but could not bear to speak it aloud. This disturbance to their paradise, the invaders that injured one of their pack and carried unnatural lights that only belonged in the heart of a home, it could only be for one of two things: the princess or the wolf. Perhaps they had followed him after his excursion in town, or someone knew the location of his sanctuary, or his behavior towards the woman with the secret papers had been so unnatural it had sparked an investigation, but no matter what had led them to his home, it would only be settled with grander blood than a forest wolf's. Currently it would seem as if he was torturing the missing princess, should anyone look through his windows and see her hunched and agonized by the fire, but if they had come in days before perhaps they had seen him wander the moonlit trees with the silver wolf. He had no idea how ignorant the village was to it; they could know that their princess was cursed or they could know she disappeared and the only trace was a wolf, or they could know absolutely nothing. He could not deduce from the muffled voices what their intent was. He felt an ominous fear in the pit of his stomach that took him back to a snowy day when he had taken up his father's bow and aimed it at a massive bear, but this time when he pushed it aside to find courage he was filled with something more ferocious, territorial. The next wolf they wounded would be him.

"I had always assumed," Lucina whispered so that the approaching crowd would not detect human voices from the cabin, "that this place was secret."

"So had I." His whisper was a roll of distant thunder, warning of the impending storm. "Whatever happens, stay here. I will manage this."

"I will not be useless again."

"No, you will be hidden. With luck, they will not notice you." As he reached for his ax and checked to ensure his knife was still strapped in its usual place, their eyes met briefly and he almost fell into the abyss of them, but he had a pack to defend. Only fallen alphas ignore a plight such as this, he reminded himself with bitter thoughts of his father. "Do not watch me. Hide, if you can, or at least keep to the shadows."

She nodded; he heard the rustle of her hair and dress like the bitterest winter wind in the trees. "Tell me all that you learn. And bring the hurt wolf inside."

"I will," he vowed simply in a voice that was steadily becoming grave and merciless. In one hand he gripped the ax and with the other he opened the door, detecting with his perceptive ears that Lucina had crept away from light and glass, so he felt as if every inkling of restraint within himself had also crawled back into the shadows, fear and sympathy alike. The weak torches from the invaders barely cast light to his trodden earth doorstep and gave him the advantage of suspense, and he closed the door behind himself while the ax seemed tense in his hand. He briefly examined his injured wolf, whose ragged breath and bloody coat only enraged him further, and then his attention fell on the foremost of the townsfolk. He raised his voice. "What business do you have out here?"

"You've been out here alone for quite some time, woodsman," the man replied with a twinge of fear in his words. Apparently he had not seen Priam in the flesh before and realized he was a massive beast. "After the other day in town, we thought it was time to make sure you aren't up to anything, and here you come armed to the teeth. Something to hide?"

He snorted and lowered the ax to bump rhythmically against his thigh. "I've lived out here a while. Seeing anything carrying fire out here makes me nervous. I think introductions would put me at ease, to avoid any issues later."

"You first. We've all heard plenty of stories, but your name is never part of them."

"Priam." He tilted his head up just a bit, feeling irritated and channeling that into arrogance. "Tell me your name before sunrise, please."

Though he struggled to hide it, this intruder was visibly nervous to be in the presence of this alleged beast man. He fumbled a bit with wordless sound before he finally proclaimed with certainty, "Morgan. My name is Morgan."

"Well, Morgan, what do you need from me?"

"You were in town the other day and took a paper from my friend. She was so worried about buying your silence she forgot to get the paper back. It's very important to us, and we wanted to know if you had... read it." He inhaled deeply, brandishing his torch ever so slightly like a sword of light raised against a dark adversary. "I do not know if you have met with anyone else concerning the information on that paper, but I am here to say that we could use any information you have."

"What sort of information is that?" He shifted his weight a bit so that he seemed to carry more on his shoulders and that made them look tense and stronger. A slim knot of worry was forming in his gut, intermingled with the fiery embers of territorial possession that he carried nearly constantly now. It was evident that this poor man-more of a boy, now that Priam's eyes had adjusted to see him better-had ventured into the woods because he was desperate, but as much as he felt compelled to help a wandering boy, his loyalty to the wolf girl hidden in his home was greater.

"Where the princess might be," Morgan replied, still bolstered by his torch and his safe position at the edge of the trees. "I was a... supporter of hers. My friends and I wish to restore her to the throne."

"Well, I'm sorry. I know nothing."

Morgan's face fell somewhat, and his torchlit face sunk back into shadows when he lowered the flames. "She was about my height, dark hair that hung past her shoulders, blue eyes."

"Is it possible she is dead?" Priam voiced confidently as if he believed the lies he was telling. He had never lied before, but what was the difference from normal talking? He knew humans were notorious for it, so he could do it as well as any of them. "She must have been missing for quite some time if you were willing to come all the way out here."

"I suppose, but all that we found of her was a torn nightgown. No blood, no body, and no ransom note." Memories flashed through Morgan's eyes, the painful kind that Priam had masterfully forgotten himself. "I had hope that she escaped."

More than anything he wanted this young man to leave his woods, return to the complicated and hurtful world of humans. It had hurt him as it had hurt Priam, and it was especially tragic that the princess herself was only separated from these allies by a door and a secret. Even though he had a shred of empathy for this man who had lost something precious, Morgan's loss meant very little to Priam. The man would have to deal with loss, as Priam did. "If you were smart, you would abandon hope for work and results."

"I know." Morgan swallowed and nodded, his face steeling. His companions, who had not left the security of the trees, began to march back through them, and Morgan hesitated a last moment. "If you do happen to see her, let her know her brother wants her back."

This came as a mild surprise, but Priam was too full of irritation and discomfort to truly realize what this may imply. "If her brother is alive, why is he not on the throne?"

Morgan had already turned his back, and his words were spoken to the woods. "She is the eldest and our father said she should rule. I have to honor those wishes."

"I see." Priam turned back to the wolves, reaching for the wounded one. Its companion backed off to allow this, and with the beast in his arms he returned to the cabin. Morgan and his torchlit companions were long gone into the night, and when he turned his gaze to the window of his own house he saw Lucina's glorious, lacrimal eyes, despondent from a pain he could not name but was certainly, in that moment, sharing.


	16. Awakened and Asleep

No words were exchanged when he entered the cabin. She shut the door behind him, since his arms were preoccupied with the wolf, and just as he had done before with Lucina, he laid the wounded creature on his own bed and set about dressing its wounds. Lucina brought him a bucket of water and a few rags and helped with this process, though her face reflected a pain that would put the wolf's to shame. Together they worked to save the beast, and more than once its iron jaws clamped down on Priam's forearms, but he already knew his blood would be spilled one way or another before the night was over, and clearly the invaders were not keen to do so.

Once every trace of red in the wolf's pelt had been carefully scrubbed away and each seeping wound bound professionally, Priam felt himself extinguish. It was finite and he had no willpower to fight it; he was too tired to think and perform complex tasks like doctoring and talking, so he tossed another log on the fire and laid down beside it. The flames seemed to be crushed beneath the fresh log, attempting to bear its weight and lift it off but unable to budge it in the slightest, until suddenly they realized streaming up around it and engulfing it from the outside in worked perfectly, and then the cheerful blaze crackled soothingly. It was his lullaby, the popping of dry wood paired with shallow breathing from a wolf, which harmonized with the gentle breeze of Lucina's subtle shifting. His eyes darted between the glowing embers and her, lost in the shadows and seated beside the patient that had, at one point, tried to kill her. Never had he truly recognized the light Lucina seemed to carry, a slight phosphorescent glow that came from her pallid flesh and was imperceptible unless she was surrounded by nothing but darkness. In this light, her hair was a waterfall more tumultuous than he had ever seen in the craggiest sections of the woods, tumbling down to the foamy gleam of her skin, but it endeared him because it was so similar to his own. Not in length, surely, but in savage liberation. It was one thing he particularly envied about the beasts of the woods: their shaggy pelts were never too long or unkempt. In the mechanical world of humans, even hair could be jailed or executed for the strangest of reasons. The absurd thought quickly sent him to sleep, but he did not remain in the shadowy world of dreams for long. All night he flickered between deep slumber and wavering awareness, and each time he felt himself return to consciousness he would check Lucina and the wolf.

She stayed by the creature all night, never resting, using a clean rag and a bucket of pure water to squeeze moist drops into the open mouth of the wolf. It lapped unenthusiastically at the rag, clearly too weak to appreciate a commodity like water, but it was breathing when the red light of morning spread through the windows. With daytime imminent, the beast's companion scratched at the door as a rejected dog would, begging to be brought inside, and Priam determined after what seemed to be hours of thought that he should include this poor wolf. He hauled himself up but she beat him to the door, and as soon as a sliver of chilled air seeped through the opening so did the creature, pushing its way inside and darting immediately for its comrade. Reunited, they seemed to rejoice and smile, the wounded one even raising its head a bit. Something about their meeting inspired him, but in a dark and foreboding manner, as if he had come to terms with a previously evaded demise. He turned to her, watching as she shut the door in some sort of stupor, examining the fading scrapes on her bare ankles that had been caused by the very animals now occupying his bed. "Who is your brother?"

"He was the boy out there," she replied monotonously, eyes fixated on the floorboards. "The one that spoke to you."

"He said he would not take the throne because it was the will of your father. They cannot take back your kingdom without a king to crown."

"While my father did wish for me to wear the crown, there are other reasons Morgan cannot rule. It is of no concern to you." She lifted her gaze, the usual vitality sapped entirely from her eyes. "Or to me. I cannot go back."

"If you explained to Morgan first, told him about the wolf-"

Fury flickered across her face. "I do not stay because of the curse! We have discussed this, woodsman. I stay because of you, though you seem to be deaf half the time. Even if Morgan understood the wolf, he would have to convince every one of our followers that I am to be trusted. And, supposing those loyals do not turn on me, all of this would lead to me ascending the throne in a world where you don't exist."

"Why do I matter above your people?" He was careful of the fire so that, should something snap in either of them no one would end up in the flames. "If your city is anything like our wolves, they need a leader or else they are lost. You saw how they were when I bested their alpha."

"You usurped his position," she accused suddenly, gesturing to the injured creature whose eyes had once again closed, and whose companion was curled up on the floor. "Do not pretend that your situation fits mine, because if it does, you are the evil that needs to be conquered. That alpha will return stronger and kill you, and the wolves will follow it again as if you never existed."

"If I am the usurper, why do you stay?"

"You know very well why."

Though thoughts of the city and these politics normally irritated him to the point of rash anger, some part of this morning and that terrible night caused him to snap. He was livid, absolutely enraged, and no curse could save her now. "If it is 'love' I suggest you forget it now. Even if I were interested in understanding it, even if I had the slightest inclination to act on it, even if it has already ensnared me, I am not from a fairytale. I am not here to rescue you, and you are not here to rescue me. Whatever fantasy held you here for so long, forget it. Abandon it. I have no idea what you mean by 'love' and I never will. Go be with other humans; those are your people and with them you belong. Go reclaim your throne and let me stay out here until the wolf reclaims his." He stepped closer to her, towering above her, and she seemed to shrink down until he realized she was practically cowering on the ground. "I enjoyed the company of the wolf, yes. I will miss hunting with a partner. But this princess and her conflicts do not concern or interest me. You are healed enough to leave. Morgan will not have left the woods in one night. Go catch him and tell him what you will about me."

Tears slipped silently from her eyes, and she turned her head away from him so that he could not see. Dawn filtered in through the windows but the light could not sway him, not when he was in such a state. Even the wolves could sense the argument, for they had both lifted their heads to observe.

"You do not know what you say," she murmured, as if his speech had only wounded her eyes. "If it is what you want, I will leave. May I at least keep the dress?"

"Keep whatever you like. It's all the same to me. Just leave, and take these human troubles with you."

Wordlessly she nodded and reached for his bow, which was tossed carelessly on the small table, and he felt a twinge of anxiety that she would take his last memory of his father. It passed quickly, though, and he began planning for a replacement. Lucina, the strange werewolf who had come to him what seemed like years ago, stepped out his door for what he determined would be the last time. The wounded wolf glanced between him and the door, and after a moment hobbled away from the bed to follow her. Its healthy companion whined but stayed put, and then the door shut behind the pair.

Until midday Priam idled about the cabin, explaining things to the wolf in the body language he had used so frequently with Lucina, and the consequences of his actions came at him slowly and then ebbed away. He was prepared for this; he knew how to harden so that loss felt like nothing at all. He thought of his mother, could not remember her face or her voice or her manner of death, but he recalled distinctly that he had lost her and his father had dragged them away from the world of humans. Away from human troubles. All those years ago he had become accustomed to solitude, and he had a wolf to fill the void of the one he lost. When he realized the time, he brought this new companion into the woods, silently exploring trees as if they held the answers, and soon he found himself following a vaguely familiar trail. It let out near the summer den of a grizzly, though there were no signs of the beast today, and as he scanned the surrounding area he realized that, growing on the hill above the cave, was a single cherry tree.

What had he done? He told Lucina a legend of a cherry tree who had torn away the armor of a pine, how they had broken the barrier between wild and civilized with their friendship, and he said he had learned it from the cherry herself. He had lied about that, too. He had learned it from her, from Lucina, from the piece of civilization that had torn away his armor and forged with him a friendship that broke all barriers. He had sent her off because her problems apparently meant nothing, even when she had abandoned her kingdom in favor of a life with him. Whatever it had been, anger, frustration, denial, was irrelevant. All that mattered was his ability to act now and amend his grave mistake.

He rerouted for town, knowing that it would be nearly dark by the time he arrived, and the wolf sauntered alongside him. It was excited to see the town, Priam assumed, and he let that raise his spirits a bit. When they stepped out of the woods altogether, supported in spirit by one another, he experienced a trace of depression that he had not known since childhood, one that flowed around his stone hunter's heart and reminded him he was entirely alone in the woods save for the creatures who had stumbled into it. Pushing this aside for now, he and the wolf crept through the twilit streets and explored obscure alleys with honed senses, detecting traces of many things but not a girl and a wounded wolf. He knew it was not a futile endeavor; if she was not here she would be by morning, and Morgan's band would surely announce the return of the princess immediately if she had encountered them in the forest. It was a sprawling city, despite its relative dwarfism compared to his domain in the woods, so he could not search it in its entirety without rest. He and the wolf stopped in an alley that appeared free of even rats, and he leaned against the wall while the beast sniffed around. Somehow he would find Lucina before harm could befall her, though his faith in her survival was strong, and even if she did not wish to see him he would apologize for his words and then return to his home with a clear conscience. Part of him still hoped she would return with him and be the wolf forever, but this was a dream for children and he tossed it aside.

The wolf snapped to attention suddenly, interrupting his thoughts, and darted off, and before he could call it a coward or traitor, something blacker than the night descended on him. It seemed to come from the sky, or at least the rooftops, but by the time he had deduced its origins it had made contact. He saw the light of the stars dashed across the sky like smeared blood and then the darkness overtook him entirely.


	17. Merciless Inquisition

Darkness, pulsing through his temples and blocking his eyes, filled the air around him like a large, thick cloud. His breath was unaffected but his mind was still furred and incoherent. Somewhere outside of the foggy obscurity was something perhaps related to human speech, and it tempted him with some of its quickly spoken phrases, but he could not understand. Words hardly made sense when he was of sound mind, let alone when he was fighting his own mind for a light to explain this darkness. He lifted a hand to rub his eyes but found that he was bound to something. When he ducked his head to reach his hand, he realized the omnipresent shadows were caused by a thick cloth wound tightly over his eyes and ears, but he could not find enough of a grip with his limited mobility to tear it away. The vaguely human voice chattered on, just a bit louder and definitely angrier, but for the time being Priam did not care. Distant memories were pooling back into his immediate mind: a torchlit confrontation with a frightened boy, an argument with a companion that ended in strange emptiness, a quest with a wild animal to locate a popular missing woman, and a descending shadow that had wiped the known world away. He could be anywhere now, but assuredly he was no longer in his familiar woods. Briefly the wolf crossed his mind-the lonely one who had stayed with him as the others left-and he feared that harm had befallen it when the terrible blackness had struck him, but this was pushed aside when Priam began to consider his own situation. Here he was, somewhere unknown, and all because he simply could not forgive himself for his harsh words to the princess he hated and the wolf he favored. Loved, she had said. He could not remove the word from his thoughts. Loved.

"I truly expected that the forest would change you," the distant voice said suddenly, coherently, so close to Priam's ear that he felt the hot breath on his cheek. Fingers dug under the blindfold and tore it away, but the darkness was still greatly prevalent. One candle lit the room, a stout thing with an ironically cheerful flame, and there were no windows from which to gauge the time, so Priam instead turned his head to the speaker and made note of the dark cloak. The speaker was thin but muscled, and dressed darkly as if to blend with the shadows and the night, though his distinctive copper hair almost seemed aflame and his narrow eyes were too sharp to ignore by observing other things. Priam tested the restraints again and determined that, with a bit of force, he could break them. He would give this strange kidnapper time for explanation and then he would be on his way. Calmly the man began again, "Not you specifically, of course. I didn't know very much about you, but I certainly knew of your father. I thought-well, we all thought-that being out there, all alone with no distractions, would stabilize your strange bloodline. No more mistakes, no more terrible taste. Your father would come back with a new mindset and he would bring you here to be a true knight. It's ridiculous, the things we think as children."

"I agree with the sentiment," Priam allowed, tilting his chin up at this mysterious jailor, "but I do not understand. Should I know you? Why do you know me?"

"Part of my profession is avoiding publicity, but I make it a point to know things. From the rumors, I was only a little older than you when your father left town, but as I grew up I picked up quite a few stories about your taboo heritage." The speaker chuckled softly, the haunting sound echoing around the darkened room as he stepped in front of Priam. "Interesting things about your little cabin, that's for sure. I already said I do not usually do this, but I think that the situation calls for a little formality. The name's Gaius, master navigator of the world's dark underbelly, and since I told you that I want your name."

"You know my father but not my name?"

"I never knew him personally, but I heard plenty of stories. Heroic bloodline, numerous great warriors along the branches of the family tree. Everyone around knew of your father, but when it comes to you things are a little more... unclear."

"Priam," he replied tersely, beginning to pull at the restraints. "I want a few answers. I think you know what they are."

"Where you are, why you're here, where that beast of yours went, things like that?" Gaius shook his head with a snobbish grin. "Those aren't the kinds of questions I can answer for you just yet. First I have to ask a few of my own. Those are the rules of interrogation." As if on cue, he pointed towards the straining ropes on Priam's forearms. "I know you can escape, easily. You can probably kill me with a look. But you have no idea where you are and finding your way out of a hostile, unfamiliar environment might be more than you can handle. But, if you sit there like a good boy and cooperate for a little you may find some answers of your own."

Priam let his arms relax, listening closely to the tone of Gaius's voice for clues. "Go on, then."

"How long have you been holding the princess?"

"What?"

"Many people in the kingdom have reason to mistrust you. I've been doing a little observation, just for curiosity's sake, and early this morning I saw Princess Lucina running from your homestead. She was agitated and armed, or I would have stopped her. How long have you had her there? Did you take her from the palace? What was your part in the siege?"

"Are you accusing me of kidnapping her?" Priam straightened his back to show this Gaius that he would not succumb to harsh questions and false confessions. "I found a woman in the woods. She was hurt, so I brought her to the cabin to heal her. It was from her that I learned there was any sort of political unrest. Never was she kept against her will."

"How long did you have possession of her?"

"You say that like I imprisoned her. I already answered that."

"Fine. How long was she with you?"

Priam counted the days in his head, associating each dawn with arguments and unrest but each dusk with mystery and adventure and union. How long had it been? Some nights stretched endlessly in his memory, spanning entire months, while others were mere seconds. "Must have been less than a month."

"What did she tell you of political unrest?"

"She was royalty, there was an armed rebellion against her, when they came she ran into the woods." Priam shrugged as best he could with the restraints holding his arms down. "I didn't hear it all at once. She talked about wanting to go back, but never did because-"

Gaius, previously pacing, halted just in front of Priam and focused his narrow olive eyes on Priam's face as if he could crack him in half. "Because?"

"Because-" He shook his head and cleared the temporary sensitivity from his face. "Because she didn't want to."

"She didn't want to, or you didn't want her to?"

"She didn't want to. Though, I will admit, I was... not opposed to her staying."

"Fine." Gaius nodded thoughtfully, though the crease between his brows indicated he had not found what he was looking for. "I will be leaving you now. You have provided me with something, at least, and for that I will thank you. We are not through, though."

"Before you leave, can I ask about something?"

"You may ask anything. I probably won't answer."

"What did you mean when you said you hoped I would be changed by the forest? And my taboo history?"

"Oh." Gaius had already turned towards the darkness, but Priam's eyes had adjusted enough to see the outline of a thick wooden door with rusty hinges and moss in its crevices. "Your father married a strange woman while he was still a knight, and that was not exactly allowed but the king made an exception for a man like that. The woman became increasingly odd, though nobody could quite tell why, and when she had you she was worse. The rumors spread and your father seemed oblivious. Then, one day, she just left him. No explanation, no farewells, just up and left. He became reclusive and neglectful. The king sent him away from the palace and he lost it all. Brought you to the woods not a month after the woman left."

"You mean," he struggled to grasp the idea that the woman in the back of his mind, the smile and the romantic goodbyes as his father departed each morning, the lonely depression that had engulfed the pair in her absence, had all hidden the heartlessness of his mother, "she did not die? She left?"

"I only know rumors. We're similar in age, so my memories are as clear as yours. But the rumors are consistent, and from what I've scouted, your little romance with the princess lines up with the stories of your dad. Strange woman with strange behavior no one can explain, no one can put their finger on what's wrong, then she leaves the man and something in him changes for the worse." Gaius stepped towards the door, prying it open and drawing a splitting screech from its reluctant hinges. "I couldn't catch your wolf, by the way. The thing tried to protect you but seemed to realize it was powerless. Thought you might like to know it's safe."

"And Lucina?"

"No one has seen her since she left the cabin."


	18. Choice and Revelation

Cracks traced with moss etched the outline of the door. He had practically memorized it in the hours since Gaius the jailor had left, pondering what he now understood about his father and his past, yet now his entire situation was even more perplexing. Which source of pain should he pursue, the fresh wound of the missing princess or the old scar reopened by the betrayal of his parents? Both assailants needed to be chased and destroyed as painfully as possible, and he could destroy them with ease. Already he knew his restraints would not hold, but with no plan and even less thoughts, there was no guarantee that once he broke free he could even accomplish anything worthwhile. Parents or princess? There was no one to tell him the right answer; alphas decide that for themselves. Perhaps he deserved this as punishment for his arrogance to Lucina, when he sent her away bearing his last link to his father, but then if it were punishment there would surely be a moment where he felt clarity and the correct path opened up to him.

He snapped the restraints, finally fed up with them. He needed to rub his eyes and wrists in order to think straight, anyway. Parents or princess? He had already told Lucina he had no interest in her, but the more time passed the more he realized how much of a lie that had been. She was the center of his daily routine in a way nothing had ever been, the most prominent issue of the day and most beautiful aspect of the night. Without her he was nothing and stood for nothing, and had no future save endlessly roaming the woods until something took him and buried his bones under the snow. On the other hand, now that he knew it was hopelessly pining after a heartless lover that had destroyed his father from the inside, he knew better. He was not about to make those same mistakes and be driven from the land he had dutifully served for his entire life. And now that he knew it was his mother to blame for his isolation, he could almost see a way forward. In some inexplicable way, understanding the past was giving him a future, one that had never seemed possible: reintegration into the town. He would have boulders to climb, to be sure, but no monumental mountains of doubt and secrets that held him away from people. Not to mention, the closure of understanding his past gave him the ability to live in peace now, regardless of who sat the throne and what the fate of Lucina was to be. But he could not bring himself to ignore her, even when he had already sent her off and declared his disinterest. She was in danger from every front and he was not the type of person to simply stand by as a creature was cornered.

Parents were in the past; Lucina was the present. He thought no more of the future and bounded across the room in two strides, pausing only to heave open the rotting door. It led to a wooden staircase, which he feared would break under his weight until he considered the idea that he had already been lugged down it by others. He lurched up the stairs, invigorated, and found himself in a shabby house with a quiet fire and two sleepy sellsword guards. They grabbed swords when they saw him but he subdued the first by flipping a table into his path while the second one swung his sword, missed, and found his wrists within Priam's iron grip. He swung that second misfortunate guard into the table, satisfaction swelling in his chest when he heard glass bottles clinking against iron cups. The first guard stood up and struggled to retrieve his sword from beneath a few loaves of bread and the table itself, and Priam shoved the second man over the table to topple the first. As they scrambled over one another he ducked into the corner of the room and followed the wall to the doorway. One guard recovered his sword but Priam was out the door already, and neither had the swift feet capable of giving pursuit.

Dawn was beginning to break outside, but barely. Night still ruled as he sprinted away from the house of captivity and through the uneven cobbles that paved this poor section of town. He heard shouts coming from the house, and footsteps in the otherwise silent alleys, but he had no time to worry. While he had no official plan, his two objectives were finding his wolf and then Lucina, assuming the latter had even come to town. Because it was night, he knew she would avoid people like a wild animal, but come actual daybreak she would be the princess he despised, and then it was all too likely that he would find her in the castle. He hoped this would not cause further conflict, but ignored the thought when he realized it was too conditional and too far in the future. The footsteps were getting louder, accompanied by the subtle click of plate armor and the hushed voices of irritated soldiers, so he ran harder. He was conditioned by life in the woods, able to flee with ease after years of being chased by the very creatures he now sought to save. When he was close to detection he stuck to muddy ditches behind buildings where his pursuers would be hesitant to walk, and when he saw the light of torches he changed direction at all costs. At last he came to a quiet street with not a waking soul, except a four-legged creature scratching at a wooden door. A few steps closer showed it to be a wolf; it dug at the door furiously and suddenly he recognized it as his companion. At its feet, much to his pleasure, was the wounded wolf that had accompanied Lucina away.

Immediately he assumed she was inside the house. Why else would both wolves be here, and why would the healthy one want to enter this particular building in the center of the street? The door was locked when he tested it, and the wolves whined in harmony while he gathered his strength and rammed his way through the door. Wood splintered and fled at his weight, and the door gave easily, but there was no one waiting in the entry and the house was one room, one floor. He paused and listened, detecting no breath, but the wolves darted in as if on the trail of a rabbit. With no better plan he followed them, inspecting the hanging herbs which must have been left to dry decades ago and the mounted pelts torn apart by moths. There were two beds, one large and one small, as if for parents and a single child. They sat on either side of a hearth, which held ancient coals and a rusty cooking pot, and there was a table shoved in the corner, set as if for a meal but covered in dust because no one had come. The healthy wolf jumped onto the large bed and dug back the musty sheets, while the injured wolf nudged him towards its companion.

The room was black as pitch but he still saw the metal gleaming when the wolf had pulled back enough blankets. He shoved it aside gently and admired the treasure uncovered: a sword and a note in sprawled handwriting. He recognized the sword from his prophetic dream, the blade he had used to slay a wolf and free a woman from its carcass. If he had hackles they would be raised, both from the manifestation of a dream and from the words of the note that seemed to have sprung out of the recesses of his memories:

 _Son, I know I've failed you in many ways. I'm bringing you to the woods to run from my problems, but maybe by the time you read this you'll have worked past them. Who can say. I want you to have my sword, though, so that when you come home you can have the life I almost ruined. Use it well. And I want you to know the truth about your mother too._

 _She was a trickster from the start. I loved her more than anything, but that was probably a trick too. I told her everything, all my secrets and all the secrets from my career too. She was a good listener at first and stuck by my side through everything. She had you and I thought I had done everything right. Then she was distant, and stopped talking or listening. I should have suspected things then but it wasn't until she began to abuse you that I started to care. I caught her performing spells numerous times, and all I remember about them was that you were at the center of one and that was the only time I was upset. I think I stopped her before anything happened. Then she left, and I lost my position as a knight._

 _I'm sorry my weakness led to this. I don't know what life I'm bringing you into, but I can only pray it's better than what we had. Whatever happens to me, I want you to stay safe. Don't seek out your mother, and don't make my mistakes. Good luck, Son._

And there it was, the answer to the question of how to proceed. The past was the past, and even his father knew it was to be left that way. He took the sword and found its sheath below it, so he buckled that on. Then, he lifted the sword and left the house with the wolves at his heels.


	19. The End

Never in his life had he used a sword. It was completely foreign, even when he gripped it in his dominant hand. The weight was wrong, the methods for its effective operation were unfamiliar, and even the idea of a jeweled and carved steel weapon seemed superfluous. He could kill just as effectively with the passive bow while preserving his own safety, or feel the life ebb away from a target as he ended it with an aggressive knife, but a sword was some cowardly combination; too close to keep clean hands, too far to experience the opponent's death. At least, he assumed as much given the dimensions of his father's old weapon.

He was a child when they left, but that was in the past. Memories of the old place had not stirred, not even in the vague way that dream memories surface in one's subconscious, and so he determined that once everything had come to pass here he would return to the woods. There everything made sense, and no one was manipulative and the concept of love remained just that. He would leave his father's sword somewhere here, in the human world, and have no trace of the dishonored knight and deposed alpha left to make his mind whirl with morbid thoughts. He would live as he always had, in perfect silence and fellowship with the woods, and someday a creature would surpass his strength and become alpha through his death. Frigid, forgotten, his bones would rot in the snow and life would go on in the forest as always. The obscure notion that an outsider, one of the pretty, flowering, carefully cultivated outsiders could ever enter his woods and tear away his armor and coexist with him peacefully would fade like the memories of his childhood before the wild. As soon as he settled affairs here, he would return to nothing and remain there for eternity.

The castle loomed before him, almost a forest in its own right with all the turrets and spires and bricks carefully laid into walls. Moonlight glimmered between ramparts, and the banners and flags adorning the otherwise dire stone shivered in the chilly night. The gates were open and he detected no trace of guards, at least for now, though the torches lit within the building itself suggested there was more life to the structure than there appeared to be. Adjusting his grip on the sword and trying to convince himself it was perfectly natural in his hand, he crept through the great arch and found himself in a dim antechamber. It had exactly two candles mounted on opposing walls to give it light, and they flickered weakly with their wax already extremely deformed and dripping to the floor. Underneath both of them reposed his wolves, who turned their heads slowly to face him, as if enchanted. The injured one almost seemed disappointed. He forced his feet to march past them, knowing that facing whatever waited in the main throne room would set them free. The antechamber doors were not locked, but heavier than any door he had ever encountered, and he found it almost poetic that he would have to open the most difficult door in order to settle his civilized life. Briefly, while the door still shielded him from the sight of the room beyond, thoughts of Lucina crossed his mind and he pondered her role in the puzzle of his past and the grim certainty of his future. If all things went well, perhaps he would-

Would do what? What did he still need from her, and more importantly, what did he want?

All thoughts were hushed as soon as he laid eyes on the throne room. The kingdom's banners, which he knew only vaguely, were in heaps on the floor, cleaved from their supports in the rafters, and in their place flew flags of pure black, which shimmered with the ebony outline of a wolf. The two beasts from the antechamber darted into the room, slipping unconsciously around him, and he watched as they galloped to the ornate throne at the far end of the room, beneath once glorious windows now smashed so that jagged shards filtered the stars and natural air. He saw nothing of the seat itself, too busy trying to comprehend the figure in it. She was fancily clothed in mourning, but it suited her well and she carried it as a style rather than a mood, a dark veil over her face hiding any clues to how she actually appeared. On her throat was a jewel so large he mistook it for a shard of glass, and as if to lure his attention further she stroked each of his wolves with a glittering hand. There was aged skin there, that much he could see, but also power. When he lowered the point of the sword to rest on the ground she finally stood and lifted the veil.

"Welcome home, my son!" she declared in an eerily familiar voice, and it echoed across the halls like tortured ghosts. "All these years, your father thought he was sparing you from some sort of evil when you could have been king. I was prepared to make that sacrifice, you know."

"What sacrifice?" he asked, bypassing the reasonable question of her identity as he had already guessed it.

"The throne, of course! I would have let you have it, even if I was constantly whispering in your ear and telling you what to do. You were almost under my spell, too, until your father interrupted the ritual." She shook her head. "Ruined his own spell in the process, the fool. Made me change tactics. I did not want to resort to war for this, but alas, it was the only option."

"And the black?" With his free hand he gestured to the banners. "The wolves?"

"You've always felt a connection to them," she replied knowingly, casting an unsettling grin towards him. "The wolves that roamed your woods. I tried to kill you with the alpha so many times. I enchanted the beast myself, made him from the king that used to sit here, but he could not hold his own against you, my strong son."

"The king wasn't that wolf. That wolf attacked the-"

"The princess, I know. Also my doing." The witch rolled her shoulders and head lethargically. "He was a wolf, and she was a stranger. She too did a terrible job of killing you."

Narrowing his eyes and lifting the sword just a bit off the ground, he inquired confidently, "If you would have given me the throne, why kill me now?"

"Because now you are here, with your father's sword and the knowledge that I was the one who exiled you to the woods, and I was the one who cursed your beloved princess."

"She is not my beloved. I despise the princess."

"Good. Then you shall have no trouble killing her."

A third wolf, previously so still he had taken it for a misplaced statue, lunged towards him at full speed. He recognized the blue eyes, the slight limp from a wound he had treated, and he saw in her face that she recognized him too but this did not stop her. She lunged for him, and he threw his weight into raising the sword to block her attack. Its honed blade cut her chest and forced her back, and now apparently aware of the power Praim wielded, she remained at a distance, snarling ferociously nonetheless. He took a step towards her and raised the sword, but this was not the princess. This was the wolf, his companion and the accumulation of everything he appreciated in Lucina. He suddenly felt a stab of remorse for wounding her, the very thing he had come to save, and as an apology he pointed the sword towards the witch instead.

"I will not," he declared soundly. "There is only one thing in this room deserving of death."

A ray of dawn suddenly split open the dark sky emanating from the shattered window, and with it the she-wolf seized and morphed into a woman. She remained on her hands and knees, bowed under the increased weight of her curse and the pain of her wound, but for the time being she was still the creature Priam cared to protect. He stepped between her and the witch.

"You are your father's son," the witch mused. "Fine. I am prepared to offer you a deal. I can see you are still conflicted, and so you may see the genius in this deal. Join me, and I will lift the curse on the princess."

Removing such a burden would certainly ease Lucina's life, but it would also take away his tether to the woman beneath the titles and pomp. But he was starting to think of himself as his father's legacy: as a hero, and heroes would put the needs of others first. Lucina deserved to be free, no matter the cost. "Fine. I-"

"Don't," Lucina commanded suddenly, but he heeded because it was still the voice of his companion and not yet the princess. She stood, unashamed like the woman he loved, and faced him with the set jaw of a worker, a woodsman. "Priam, I can manage the curse. This monster needs to be destroyed, no matter the personal cost."

"Don't listen to her," the witch replied, as expected from an adversary. "This is the woman who was desperate enough to ask a witch for power in the first place. You know that the only reason you love her is her curse."

He tilted his chin up the way townspeople always did to him to seem bigger. "So I should kill you and let her be queen."

"You kill me and my magic is undone. The king will die somewhere in the woods, and it will look as if you did it. The princess will ascend but have no trace of the curse that made her the slightest bit likeable to you. She may even forget any affections she had, as well." The witch smiled grimly and crossed her arms. "Your options are this: kill me and face death, not to mention the doom of the kingdom, or kill her and stand a chance of saving the kingdom by my side."

At first thought the choice was still obvious. Kill the witch, and let the rightful heir take the throne. That would restore the order of everything, except she was right to say the kingdom would blame him for the death of its ruler when his corpse appeared, beaten, in his woods. And who was to say that Princess Lucina was worthy of the crown when his instincts disliked her so much? If the princess died now, it would save him the pain of ever serving the woman he hated. He could still protect the innocents of the realm if he was by the side of the witch, to soften her spells and redirect them when possible. And, like it or not, she was still his mother. He had never had a mother before, not that he could remember, but he knew enough about them to know how difficult it would be to raise a hand against his own. Alternatively, someday he could simply trust that the princess would turn into a fine ruler despite his misgivings. She would know from this whole ordeal that the witch was to blame for everything, and he would be free to live out his days in the woods no matter what. The people wanted this anyway, he remembered clearly from the paper they had accidentally given him, and Lucina herself told him the realm was more important than serving any one person. Suddenly his mind and heart had no more say in the matter; it was the kingdom and nothing else.

He lifted the sword. Both women stared expectantly at him, awaiting his choice. He looked his target in the eyes, unable to kill her without watching the life fade. He was a hunter, always had been, and he would not be passive about this kill. Before changing his grip and raising the sword over his head, he murmured, "I'm sorry."

Just before the sword made contact with her chest, she cried desperately, "I love you!" but then the blade opened a chasm of blood and bone and she was gone. He rescinded his thoughts about killing with a sword, for it proved incredibly personal as he watched her eyes glaze over. The body slumped to the ground, and he let the sword drop with it.

Lucina, the fortunate survivor, touched his shoulder. "You made the right choice."

Already he regretted the decision, though he knew deep down this was best for the realm. Consumed suddenly by the need to mourn, he sank to his knees and sat silently, observing both the body and the glimmering sun rising through the shattered window. Just before its light became blinding, he locked eyes with the two wolves from his woods and made his peace with the simple fact that he would never return to the woods.

"And you remember everything?" he inquired hollowly.

"Of course. And I remember one thing that I think you yourself forgot."

He glanced up at her, silhouetted in the morning light, one arm covering her chest while the other reached for him. "I love you."

"I..." His gaze flickered unsteadily between the corpse of his mother and the living, breathing flesh of his companion. In her eyes all trace of the princess was gone, replaced by kindness and empathy that only a hunter dependent on the woods knows. Without finery she was everything; her true curse had been broken at last. "I love you too."

He never did return to the woods, but the rest of his days were spent in that confusing but blissful gray, the silver lining between life and death that Lucina named love.


End file.
